James Campbell - Essays in Anglo Saxon History

ESSAYS IN
ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY
Silver brooch, diameter 3.5 cm., found with a large hoard of English silver
coins in Rome, and likely evidence of an English visitor there early in the
tenth century. The central roundel imitates a coin of Edward the Elder.
(British Museum)
ESSAYS IN
ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY
JAMES CAMPBELL
THE HAMBLEDON PRESS

LONDON AND RONCEVERTE
Published by The Hambledon Press 1986
102 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8HX (U.K.)
309 Greenbrier Avenue, Ronceverte WV 24970 (U.S.A.)
ISBN 0 907628 32 X (Cased)

ISBN 0 907628 33 8 (Paper)
©James Campbell 1986
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Campbell, James
Essays in Anglo-Saxon history. — History series; 26)
1. Civilization, Anglo-Saxon
2. Great Britain - Civilization - to 1066
I. Title II. Series
942.01 DA152.2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, James, 1935-

Essays in Anglo-Saxon history: 400-1200
Includes index.
1. Great Britain - History - Anglo-Saxon period,
449-1066 - Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Great Britain - History - Medieval period, 1066-
1485 - Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title.
DA152.C29 1986 942.01 85-30555
Printed by The Bath Press, Bath, Somerset
CONTENTS
Contents v
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
1 Bede I 1
2 Bede II 29
3 The First Century of Christianity in England 49
4 Observations on the Conversion of England 69
5 Bede's Reges and Principes 85
6 Bede's Words for Places 99
7 The Age of Arthur 121
8 Early Anglo-Saxon Society According to
Written Sources 131
9 The Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns 139
10 Observations on English Government from
the Tenth to the Twelfth Century 15 5
11 The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State
in the Administrative History of Western
Europe 171
12 England, France, Flanders and Germany
in the Reign of Ethelred II:
Some Comparisons and Connections 191
13 Some Twelfth-Century Views of the
Anglo-Saxon Past 209
Index 229
This page intentionally left blank
LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS
Silver brooch, found with a large hoard of Frontispiece

English silver coins in Rome; early tenth
century
1 Frontispiece of the Codex Amiatinus, produced

at Wearmouth or Jarrow before 716 28
2 Scenes from the life of Christ in a sixth-century

Italian Gospel book 68
3 Excavations under York Minster, showing column

of the basilica of the headquarters building of the
legionary fortress 120
4 David and Goliath at the beginning of Psalm 101

in a Psalter produced in Christ Church, Canterbury
between 1012 and 1023 190
5 A fourteenth-century plan of the high altar and

east end of the abbey church of St. Augustine,
Canterbury 208
vn
A CKNO WLED CEMENTS
The articles reprinted here first appeared in the following places and
are reprinted by the kind permission of the original publishers.
1 Latin Historians, edited by T.A. Dorey (Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1966), pp. 159-190.
2 Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People and
other Selections, translated by J. Campbell (Washington
Square Press, Inc., New York, 1968), pp. vii-xxxii.
3 Ampleforth Journal, Ixxvi (1971), pp. 12-29.
4 Ampleforth Journal, Ixxviii (1973). pp. 12-26.
5 Jarrow Lecture (1979).
6 Places, Names and Graves, edited by P.H. Sawyer (Leeds, 1979),
pp. 34-54.
7 Studia Hibernica, xv (1975), pp. 177-85.
8 Sachsen und Angelsachsen (the catalogue of an exhibition held
at the Helms Museum, Hamburg, November 1978-February
1979), edited by C. Ahrens (Helms Museum, Hamburg, 1978),
pp. 455-462. This appears in English for the first time here.
9 The Church in Town and Countryside, edited by Derek
Baker; Studies in Church History, 16 (Blackwells, Oxford,
1979), pp. 119-35.
10 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series,
xxv (1975), pp. 39-54.
11 His to ire Compare e de VAdministration (IVe — XVIIIe
Siecles) (Actes du XIV Colloque Historique Franco-
Allemand, Tours, 1977: Beihefte der Francia, IX: Munich
1980), edited by W. Paravicini and K.F. Werner, pp. 117-34.
12 Ethelred the Unready. Papers from the Millenary Conference,
edited by David Hill (British Archaeological Reports,
British Series 59, 1978), pp. 255-270.
13 Peritia, 3(1984), pp. 131-50.
IX
Introduction
These papers were written for varying audiences and at varying levels.
They are reprinted as they were published (except that some blunders
and slips have been corrected and that Chapter 8 is the English version of
a paper published in German). Conventions, e.g. in the printing of
diphthongs, have not been regularized. A note has been added to some of
the papers indicating (though without attempting comprehensiveness)
recent publications on the subjects concerned. In preparing this book for
publication I have been assisted by Miss Elizabeth Danbury, Mr. Michael
Leiserach and Dr. Hilary Turner; I thank them warmly. In composing
the papers it contains, I have incurred obligations too numerous to list or
even, I am sure, fully remember. So I will simply say that a large share of
any merit they have is due to my teachers, colleagues, pupils and friends,
and it is with gratitude and pleasure that I acknowledge it. I should,
however, add that one of my benefactors ought not to be left nameless,
Professor K. J. Leyser, who first interested me in medieval history, and
has continued to do so since.
XI
1
Bedel
Bede was not only, or even primarily, a historian. He finished the

Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum only three or four years before his
death in 735. He may have known that it would be the last of his major
works, for he ended it with an almost elegiac sketch of his own life and a
list of his writings. These were numerous. Bede devoted a fairly long life
- he was born in 672 or 673 - and formidable powers to become probably
the most learned and certainly the most productive of the European
scholars of his day. His works include treatises on grammar, metrics and
chronology, lives of saints, homilies and, above all, commentaries on the
Bible. Much that he wrote was unoriginal, in so far as it consisted of the
views — often the words - of his predecessors pieced together with some
rearrangement, clarification and amendment. He set out to master and
pass on a large part of the learning of the Christian Church; and
succeeded in this. Many of his works became standard and remained so
through the Middle Ages and sometimes beyond. His historical works
comprise, if hagiography is excluded, only the Ecclesiastical History, the
Lives of the abbots of his abbey of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow and the
chronicles - lists of the principal events in the history of the world -
appended to Liber de Temporibus (703) and De Tempomm Ratione (725).
They are merely a part, though an important one, of what Bede wrote
and what he was valued for through many centuries. His history has to
be interpreted in relation to the rest of his work, that of a man whose
dominant intention was to expound, spread and defend the Christian
faith by all the means in his power. 1
The Ecclesiastical History shows how great these means were. That
1
The chronicles are best edited by T. Mommsen, M. G. H. Scriptores Antiquissimi,
XIII (1898), 223-354, and the other historical works by C. Plummer, Baedae Opera
Historica (2 vols., Oxford, 1896); references below are to Plummer's edition abbreviated
as H.E., unless otherwise stated. For editions of Bede's other works see M. L. W.
Laistner and H. H. King, Handlist of Bede Manuscripts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1943) and M. T. A.
Carroll, The Venerable Bede: his Spiritual Teachings (Catholic University of America,
Studies in Mediaeval History, new ser., IX (Washington, 1946)). The poems, homilies
and some of the commentaries have been re-edited in Corpus Christianorum Series Latine,
CXIX and CXX, ed. D. Hurst, and CXXII, ed. D. Hurst and J. Fraipont (Turnhout,
1962, 1960 and 1955 respectively). For general accounts of Bede see Bede, his Life, Times
and Writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford, 1935), E. S. Duckett, Anglo-Saxon
Saints and Scholars (New York, 1947), pp. 217-338, W. F. Bolton, 'A Bede
Bibliography: 1935-60' Traditio, xviii (1962), 436-45.
1
2 Essays in Anglo-Saxon History
which is first apparent to its readers is Bede's command of Latin. He
writes grammatically and very clearly. Unlike some of his
contemporaries, who wrote to impress by a florid style and an outre
vocabulary, he intended to be understood by an audience the capacities of
some of whom he did not value highly. He writes in his commentary on
the Apocalypse, 'Anglorum gentis inertiae consulendum ratus . . . non
solum dilucidare sensus verum sententias quoque stringere disposui'. 2
Bede knew very well how to be both simple and moving. The style in
which he tells many of his stories recalls that of the gospels in its brevity,
concentration on essentials, and use of direct speech. What he says is even
more remarkable than the skill with which he says it. He sets out to give
the history of the Church in his own land in about 85,000 words. Having
begun with a short geographical and historical introduction, he gives
some account of Christianity in Roman Britain, but devotes much of the
first book and the whole of the remaining four to its progress in England
from St Augustine's arrival in 597 until 731. The numerous sources
which Bede collected and the skill with which he handled them make the
Ecclesiastical History the masterpiece of Dark Age historiography. No
history that can rival it appeared in Western Europe until the twelfth
century.3
The Ecclesiastical History itself does much to explain how so
remarkable a work could be undertaken. It shows the progress of
Christianity in England to have been feeble and flickering until the
generation following 635. But by 660 it was established in all the major
kingdoms and began to flourish. Many monasteries were founded and
many monks became learned. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury
668-690, established a school at Canterbury where most subjects
relevant to Christian learning, including Greek, could be studied.
Benedict Biscop founded the twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth
(674) and Jarrow (681-2) and collected abroad a library for them which
must have been among the best in Europe. There were other important
libraries and many monasteries owned books and contained more or
less learned men, although only Aldhelm (P640-709J among Bede's
English contemporaries approached him in eminence. Although Bede
lived on the edge of the civilised world he did not work in intellectual
isolation. His reputation and his correspondence spread far beyond the
borders of Northumbria. There were others in his own house who
2
Venerabilis Bedae Opera, ed. J. A. Giles, XII (1844), 341.
3
For Bede as a historian see e.g. W. Levison, 'Bede as Historian', in Bede, his Life,
Times and Writings, op. cit., pp. 111-51; C. W. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles in Early
England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1947) and 'Bede as Early Medieval Historian', Medievalia et
Humanistica, fasc. IV (1946), 26-36; P. Hunter Blair, Bede's Ecclesiastical History . . . and
its Importance Today (Jarrow Lecture 1959, Jarrow-on-Tyne, n.d.).
4
For the history of the church see e.g. M. Deanesly, The Pre-Conquest Church in
England (1961).
Bede I 3
could write as well as him: perhaps the finest example of the Bedan style
is the description of Bede's death by Cuthbert, his fellow-monk.
Bede's works were not only in great demand, but also occasionally
criticized.6 He was not alone in the production of hagiography and
biography. We have biographical works by five of his English
contemporaries and the fewness of the manuscripts of some of these
makes it likely that there were other such works, now lost.7 Bede
would not have been able to accomplish what he did had he not been a
member of a learned world with considerable intellectual resources.
The achievements of his contemporaries hardly rivalled his, but we
know them to have been considerable and may suspect them to have
been more considerable than we know.
English learning was fed by that of other countries.8 The chief debts
were naturally to the sources of conversion, Italy and Ireland. Bede's
scholarship depended largely on access to Italian manuscripts, the
education of many of his contemporaries on access to Irish schools.
Something was owed to Gaul, which gave England three bishops in the
seventh century and with which some English ecclesiastics, especially
Wilfrid, had close connections. The cosmopolitan nature of the Church
and the willingness of clerics to move to countries other than their own
brought influences from further afield and created multiple
opportunities for the diffusion of ideas. Archbishop Theodore came
from Cilicia; his companion Hadrian was an African. The Irish founded
monasteries in Gaul, Germany and Italy besides England; Ireland had
access to the learning of contemporary Spain and indirect
5
Ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica I, clx-clxiv.
6
Carroll, The Venerable Bede . . ., op. cit., pp. 43—6; M. L. Laistner, 'Bede as a
Classical and Patristic Scholar', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., XVI
(1933), 83.
7
The anonymous life of Ceolfrith and Eddius Stephanus's life of Wilfrid survive in
only two manuscripts each, the Whitby life of Gregory the Great in only one (Baedae
Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, I, cxl—cxli; The Life of Bishop Wilfred by Eddius Stephanus,
ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), pp. xiii-xvi; B. Colgrave, 'The Earliest
Life of Gregory the Great', in K. Jackson, N. K. Chadwick and others, Celt and Saxon:
Studies in the Early British Border (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 119-21). So much damage
seems to have been done by the Scandinavian invasions to English libraries that works
which were not popular, and in particular not popular on the Continent, must have had
only a limited chance of survival.
8
For this paragraph, W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century
(Oxford, 1946); K. C. King, The Earliest German Monasteries (Nottingham, 1961); J. M.
Wallace-Hadrill, 'Rome and the Early English Church', Settimane di studio del centra
italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, VII (Spoleto, 1960), 519-48; Bede's Europe (Jarrow
Lecture 1962, Jarrow-on-Tyne, n.d.); K. Hughes, 'Irish Monks and Learning', Los
monjes y los estudios (Abadia de Poblet, 1963), pp. 61-86, and H. Farmer, The Studies of
Anglo-Saxon Monks A.D. 600-800', ibid., pp. 87-103; J. N. Hillgarth, 'Visigothic
Spain and Early Christian Ireland', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy LXII, C (1961-
3), 167-94.
communication with the Near East. Between 690 and Bede's death
Englishmen converted much of western Germany. Irish missionaries
and perhaps a Spaniard were active there at the same time. One of
Bede's English contemporaries went to Jerusalem and then settled at
Monte Cassino. The Christian world stretched from Scotland and
Ireland to Asia Minor and Spain. It was being reduced by the
'gravissima Sarracenorum lues', as Bede well knew, but it was still, if
hardly united, much interconnected. The international connections of
the Church were partly paralleled by those of the laity. The Anglo-
Saxons had left kinsmen in Germany whom they recognised as such
and sought to convert. Others had moved with the Lombards, to
whom they were related, into Italy: this may have had something to do
with the willingness of Englishmen to visit Italy and even to settle
there.9 Saxons had settled in Gaul as Franks may have settled in
England. The coming and going of brides and exiles to and from Gaul
accompanied and was connected with that of bishops and missionaries.
The accumulation of instances may deceive. Many of the contacts
between England and the Continent in the seventh century and the
early eighth were episodic or tenuous. But there was enough
communication to enable Bede to write as the heir to much of the
learning of the Church and for an audience which was not entirely
insular in its knowledge and interests.
In his historical works Bede was able to draw on many models and
sources.10 He made no use of the classical historians, though he could
perhaps have done so — texts of some of their works which were
available in Germany in the eighth century may have arrived there via
England. His attitude towards most pagan authors was one of cautious
reserve. The chief models and foundations for his work were, apart
from the Bible, the works of Christian authors from the fourth century
on. Perhaps the most important such author was Eusebius. His
Ecclesiastical History set the standard for historians of the church.11 It left
secular affairs for the attention of the carnally minded. The wars it
described were those against heresy and persecution; its heroes were the
martyrs; the successions it recorded those not of emperors but of
bishops. Distinguished from pagan historiography in technique as in
content it included many documents and gave references to sources.
9
Levison, England and the Continent, p. 40; C. E. Blunt, 'Four Italian Coins Imitating
Anglo-Saxon Types', British Numismatic Journal, 3rd ser., V (1945-8), 285.
10
M. L. W. Laistrier, 'Bede as a Classical and Patristic Scholar', op. cit.; 'The Library
of the Venerable Bede', Bede, his Life, Times and Writings, op. cit., pp. 237-266; both
articles are reprinted in The Intellectual Heritage of the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1957).
11
A. Momigliano, 'Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century
A.D.', The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. A.
Momigliano (Oxford, 1963), pp. 79-99.
Bede I 5
Eusebius's Chronicle had a different function, to summarise universal
history from a Christian point of view, correlating Biblical history with
that of the rest of the world and showing the hand of God at work
across millennia. Bede did not have either work in the original Greek;
he used Rufmus's Latin translation and continuation of the Ecclesiastical
History and Jerome's of the Chronicle. They provided models for his
own work in either genre. He knew at least two other Christian
histories, the Adversus Paganos of Orosius and Gregory of Tours's
Historia Francorum. His view of history as the demonstration of the
power of God, of orthodoxy and of sanctity, much resembles theirs and
he owed a more direct debt to Orosius, whose geographical
introduction he imitates and borrows from. 12 His aim seems to have
been do do for the history of the Church in England what Eusebius had
done for the whole and he follows him in choice of subject-matter and
in technique. Nevertheless there are important differences between
Bede's Ecclesiastical History and its predecessor, which make his work in
some respects more like that of Gregory of Tours. Although, like
Eusebius and unlike Gregory, Bede rarely recorded secular affairs for
their own sake, he had to devote considerable attention to them.
Eusebius, writing under Constantine, had only one Christian emperor
to deal with and so was concerned with the Church as opposed to the
State. Bede had to describe a Church very much involved with the State
and to show how Providence had affected the affairs of kings many of
whom were Christian, some even saints. Secondly, while Eusebius had
incorporated accounts of martyrs in his work much more of Bede's is
devoted to the lives and particularly the miracles of saints. Belief in the
miraculous had increased greatly between the fourth century and the
eighth. The demand for it had been fed by hagiographies in the
tradition which began with the life of Anthony by Athanasius (c. 296-
373). Such lives were prominent among Bede's sources and he wrote
some himself. Writing with a largely didactic purpose and for an
audience which needed vivid and concrete demonstration of the power
of God and of virtue Bede made his Ecclesiastical History a chronological
hagiography as well as a record in the manner of Eusebius.13 He is
distinguished from most hagiographers of his time by his using
miracle-stories only to reinforce religious teachings rather than to
advertise the merits of a particular shrine.14
12
J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, 'The Work of Gregory of Tours in the Light of Modern
Research', The Long-Haired Kings (1962), pp. 49-70.
13
Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles, op. cit., pp. 82-5.
14
Bede thought wonder-working shrines could diminish rather than increase faith
when the unworthy were not healed (Carroll, p. 197) and he attributes to Cuthbert the
view that when such a shrine became a sanctuary for evildoers it also became a nuisance
to its keepers, Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1940),
p. 278.
The works of earlier writers provided Bede not only with models,
but with much of the information in the first book of the Ecclesiastical
History.15 His account of the Romans in Britain came largely from
Orosius and the pagan historian Eutropius. The interest taken by
Gaulish historians in the Pelagian heresy enabled him to gain valuable
information from the Vita Sancti Germani of Constantius. These, with
an important British source - Gildas's De Excidio - a Passio Sancti Albani,
some English tradition and a certain amount of misinformation from
the Liber Pontijicalis largely saw him through the twenty-two chapters
devoted to the period before Augustine's mission.16 His task in
compiling his much fuller account of subsequent events was more
difficult. Much is known of his sources for this since he describes some
of them in his introduction and mentions others later. He obtained a
considerable number of documents, especially papal letters, from Rome
and Canterbury. Like a true successor to Eusebius he inserted many of
them into his text; they comprise about a fifth of it and provide the
backbone of his account of the conversion and of subsequent relations
with Rome. His contacts with Rome were good enough to allow him
access not only to such letters but also to the official history of the
popes, the Liber Pontificalis', he used its account of Gregory II even while
that pope was still alive. Otherwise his chief written sources were
biographical - mainly hagiographical. He had Vitae of Fursey,
Cuthbert, Wilfred, Ceolfrith, Aethelburh and perhaps of others. Some
annals, regnal lists and genealogies were available to him but they seem
to have afforded little information on events outside Kent and
Northumbria or, for the earlier part of the seventh century, within
them.17 He was, for example, unable to record even the year in which
Augustine died.
The written sources of which we know leave the origins of much of
the Ecclesiastical History unaccounted for. Bede tells us that much of his
information came from oral tradition, either directly or through
15
The best accounts of Bede's sources are those of Plummer, Levison and Laistner in
the works cited in notes 1, 3 and 10 above.
16
For the Passio Sancti Albani, W. Levison, 'St. Alban and St. Alban's', Antiquity, XV
(1941), 337-59. Discussion of the possibility of at least part of the De Excidio being of a
date later than the mid-sixth century one usually accepted has recently been revived:
P. Gorsjean, 'Remarques sur le De Excidio attribue a Gildas', Archivum Latinitatis Medii
Aevi, XXV (1955), 155-87; 'Notes de hagiographie celtique', Analecta Bollandiana,
LXXV (1957), 185-226.
17
English sources of an annalistic nature possibly used by Bede are discussed byjones,
Saints' Lives and Chronicles, op. cit..; P. Hunter Blair, 'The Moore Memoranda on
Northumbrian History', The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. C. Fox and B.
Dickins (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 245-57; 'The Northumbrians and their Southern
Frontier', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th ser., XXVI (1948), 98-126; and P. Grosjean 'La date
du Colloque de Whitby', Analecta Bollandiana, LXXVIII (1960), 255-60. Some informa-
tion may have come to him from inscriptions, C. Peers and C. A. Ralegh Radford, 'The
Saxon Monastery at Whitby', Archaeologia, LXXXIX (1943), 40-6.
Bede I 7
18
correspondents. To determine, or guess, the value of such
information it is necessary to consider the forms in which it may have
been preserved. Mrs Chadwick has recently suggested that many of
Bede's sources were 'ecclesiastical sagas'. These were, she thinks,
sometimes transmitted orally, sometimes at some stage written down,
but retaining the characteristics of oral saga style - 'leisurely, detailed,
circumstantial and dramatic', often divided into three parts, recording
proper names and retailing conversations verbatim. 19 In the extreme
form in which she presents this theory - for example, maintaining that
Bede's account of the Synod of Whitby is 'certainly an elaborate form
of ecclesiastical saga' - it does not seem altogether helpful.20 Her criteria
appear to be capable of including very diverse works and hardly enable
one to distinguish an 'ecclesiastical saga' from a Vita of a saint.
Nevertheless, it is very likely that many of the traditions used by Bede
had been transmitted in fairly defined and constant forms and this may
have made them more reliable. How reliable is a matter for conjecture.
Certainly even detail could be preserved from the fairly remote past.
Bede was able to give a detailed description of the appearance of
Paulinus from an oral tradition a century old.21 Oral tradition can,
however, be as false as it is circumstantial and if it is accurate in details
may be so in nothing else. We cannot verify many of the traditions
Bede records. He must himself have often lacked the means to do so,
and sometimes, it may be, the inclination.
There is no doubt that Bede was exceptionally fitted to deal with
such diverse and often bad sources. More learned in chronology and
computation than any other scholar of his day he was well qualified to
correlate chronological data which, although often scanty, were in
diverse forms. His Biblical studies had involved the use of many of the
techniques of the historian. He had taken particular care in the
comparison of different texts of scriptures. His preference of Jerome's
more recent Latin translation of the Old Testament to the Greek of the
Septuagint led him radically to revise Eusebius's chronology.22 His
Biblical work naturally involved chronological problems and the
comparison of divergent texts describing the same events.23 The
compilation of commentaries required, inter alia, the exposition of the
literal meaning of scripture and so enquiry into topographical and other
facts; this may help to account for the interest in imparting topographical
18
H.E. pp. 6-7.
19
N. K. Chadwick, in Celt and Saxon, op. cit., pp. 138-85, esp. pp. 169, 177.
20
Jones is equally confident that Bede's account of the synod is in a different genre,
modelled on Acta Synodi Caesareae, Saints' Lives and Chronicles, op. tit., 181.
21
H.E. II, 16, p. 117.
22
Levison, 'Bede as Historian', op. cit., p. 117.
23
C. Jenkins, 'Bede as Exegete and Theologian', Bede, his Life, Times and Writings, op.
cit., pp. 196-9.
information apparent in parts of the Ecclesiastical History. Spurious texts
required the attention of a Biblical scholar. Bede showed himself able to
expose at least one such, the De Transitu Beatae Virginis, partly on histori-
cal grounds.24 In writing the Ecclesiastical History at the end of such a
scholarly career Bede might have been expected to produce a work of
more than ordinary reliability and it is agreed that he did.
This is not to say that the Ecclesiastical History is technically flawless
within the limits of Bede's intentions. The most conspicuous faults are
chronological; the dates he gives are not always mutually consistent.
Although Bede was the most expert chronologist of his day his task in
dating events in England was very difficult. He had to correlate dates
given according to the regnal years of the kings of different kingdoms
with one another and with dates from ecclesiastical sources expressed in
imperial or consular years or in terms of the position of the year in a
nineteen-year cycle, the indiction. He gives dates according to several
systems, frequently as years A.D. - it was largely through him that this
system became current. The correlation of different dates which Bede
gives according to different systems reveals discrepancies. Various
attempts have been made to explain and correct these but many of the
problems involved remain controversial. There is disagreement on
when Bede began the year and on how he calculated regnal years. Thus
cases have been put for the battle on the Winwaed's having taken place
in 655, which is the year Bede gives, in 654 and in 656. All the theories
advanced require the assumption that Bede made some mistakes. It is
doubtful whether some of the problems will ever be completely solved.
We have little evidence beyond what Bede himself provides. For many
secular events he was dependent on dates expressed in regnal years.
These may have often been inaccurate or expressed in complete years
only. Different systems of calculation may have been used in different
kingdoms at different times and Bede may not have been well informed
about them. He may have made corrections or alterations on the basis
of information unknown to us. 2
Other errors can be detected in Bede's work which are due to slips,
or to the difficulties of his material. Dr D. P. Kirby has shown recently
that although Bede clearly implies that the marriage of Edwin of
Northumbria to a Kentish princess took place in 625 he provides other
evidence which makes it very likely that the marriage took place in or
very near to 619. Either Bede made a false assumption - that Paulinus
was consecrated before he left for Northumbria - or else he wrote the
passage concerned rather carelessly.26 Arch-Abbot Brechter in an
24
Laistner, 'Bede as a Classical and Patristic Scholar', op. cit. pp. 84-5; cf. Jenkins, op.
cit., pp. 160-1.
25
For the literature on Bede's chronology, D. P. Kirby, 'Bede and Northumbrian
Chronology', English Historical Review, LXXVIII (1963), 514-27.
26
Kirby, 518, 522-3.
Bede I 9
elaborate study of Bede's account of St Augustine's mission to Kent has
alleged that Bede knowingly falsified its chronology, ante-dating
Ethelbert's baptism, post-dating Augustine's episcopal consecration,
reversing their order and discarding a papal letter which showed him to
be wrong.27 This is too dramatic. Brechter's arguments for what the
course of events really was are not conclusive, though neither are they
implausible, especially on the date of Ethelbert's baptism. The evidence
he offers for Bede's dishonesty is unconvincing. Bede may have erred
through carelessness in saying that Ethelbert received the faith in 597, if
he meant by this that he was baptised then. 2 He may have been wrong
about the time at which Augustine was consecrated and certainly con-
fused the archbishop of Lyons with the bishop of Aries and misdated a
journey to Rome.29 He had difficult sources to deal with, could slip, and
did not write in an age in which it was thought necessary to distinguish
between known facts and deductions or assumptions.30 There is no need
to assume more.
Some of the discrepancies and awkwardnesses in Bede's text may be
attributable to the method and circumstances of his writing. He does
not seem to have gathered all his evidence before he began to write, but
27
(H.) S. Brechter, Die Quellen zur Angelsachsenmission Gregors des Grossen (Beitr. zur
Gesch. d. Alten Monchtums u.d. Benediktinerordens, Heft 22), Munster i. W., 1941),
pp. 228-52, critically discussed by F. A. Markus, 'The Chronology of the Gregorian
Mission: Bede's Narrative and Gregory's Correspondence', Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, XIV (1963), 16-30.
28
It is likely that Bede did not know when Ethelbert was baptised. The use ofinterea
with the perfect tense to introduce his account of Augustine's journey to be consecrated
abroad suggests that when he wrote 1, 26 and 27, he was uncertain of the relationship of
this event to the baptism of Ethelbert (cf. Ill, 20, p. 169; III, 28, p. 194; IV, 4, p. 213). The
absence of a date for the baptism from the chronological summary in V, 24, strongly
suggests that his sources did not give him one. The phrase 'post XX et unum annos
acceptae fidei' in II, 5 (p. 90), is not entirely unambiguous. It probably refers to the
baptism or conversion of Ethelbert which Bede would therefore here place in 597. If so
this may well be a slip on his part. There is other evidence that II, 5, was carelessly written
(Kirby, op. cit., p. 521).
29
The dating of this journey is connected with the vexed question of the authenticity
of the Responsiones to Augustine attributed to Gregory, for which see M. Deanesly and P.
Grosjean 'The Canterbury Edition of the Answers of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine',
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, X (1959), 1-49; P. Meyvaert, 'Les "responsiones" de S.
Gregoire le Grand a S. Augustin de Cantorbery', Revue d'Histoire Ecdesiastique, LIV
(1959), 879-94; 'Bede and the Libellus Synodicus of Gregory the Great', Journal of
Theological Studies, new ser., XII (1961), 298 n.; M. Deanesly, 'The Capitular Text of the
Responsiones of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XLI
(1961), 231-4.
30
It is not altogether clear that Bede's well-known account of the co-operation of
Oswy of Northumbria and Egbert of Kent in choosing an archbishop of Canterbury is
not a mere deduction based on the conflation of a letter from Pope Vitalian to Oswy and
some account of Egbert's sending a candidate for the see to Rome, H.E. Ill, 29, pp. 196-
9; IV, 1, p. 201; Hist. Abb., ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, I, 366; cf. Plummer's
note, II, 200-1.
rather to have made insertions in what he had already written as new
material reached him. The type of text which Plummer calls C appears
to preserve one recension slightly earlier than the last, differing from it
chiefly in not including chapter XIV of the fourth book: traces of other
insertions into an earlier version or versions appear in the text as we
have it.31 It may well be that Bede had to write under difficulties. He
was fairly old by the time he wrote the Ecclesiastical History; the tone and
nature of the last chapter suggest that he may have been ill. He may
have been hindered by liturgical duties and shortages of writing
materials and copyists. It was not perhaps easy for him to find his way
about his own text or materials; indexes have been invented since his
day. One may fancy the Ecclesiastical History as the last great work of an
elderly and ailing scholar compelled to great labours by a sense of
relgious duty. It is surprising, not that there are inconsistencies,
ambiguities, or loose ends in the Ecclesiastical History, but that they are
so few. It is to Bede's credit rather than his discredit that it is possible to
criticise him largely on a basis of evidence he himself provides. The
quantity of the information he records and the care with which he uses
it are such that he may be regarded almost as if he were a modern
historian. Almost and sometimes, but it is wrong to judge his work, or
to use it, as if he really were one.
It is not Bede's competence which marks him as the product of a
distant age, but his purpose. His general aim is explicit and inevitable, to
describe men and their deeds so that the religiosus et phis auditor may be
excited to imitate good and to shun evil.3 Much of the Ecclesiastical
History is devoted to inculcating through stories about the past the
virtues and the dogmas which Bede had spent most of his life
expounding, probably to a narrower and more learned audience, in his
commentaries. For example, in the commentaries Bede says that there
are two kinds of compunction with the same outward manifestations.
One came from fear of hell and could develop into the other which came
from the love of heaven. The story of Adamnan of Coldingham in the
Ecclesiastical History gives an instance of this. Adamnan, thanks to an
accident and his own scrupulousness, continued throughout his life a
regime of mortification which had been intended to last for a shorter time
and
quod causa divini timoris semel ob reatum compunctus coeperat, iam causa
divini amoris delectatus praemiis indefessus agebat.33
Most of the doctrines which Bede dramatises and makes memorable in
the Ecclesiastical History are naturally of more general application than
31
For textual questions see Plummer, pp. Ixxx-cxliv, The Leningrad Bede, ed. O.
Arngart (Copenhagen, 1952), pp. 13-35; The Moore Bede, ed. P. Hunter Blair and R. A.
B. Mynors (Copenhagen, 1959), pp. 11-37.
32
H.E., p. 5.
33
H.E. IV, 23 (25), p. 264; Carroll, The Venerable Bede . . ., op. cit., pp. 162-3, 234.
Bedel 11
this. Thus his accounts of visions of the other world, which are perhaps
the most obvious demonstrations of his homilectic intentions, drive
home such points as the folly of depending on the chance of being able to
make a death-bed repentance, the certainty that even the least thought or
action will be taken into account after death, the purpose and
frightfulness of purgatory and the much greater frightfulness and
eternity of hell.3 The value of such instruction remains, no doubt,
semper, ubique et pro omnibus. But much of what Bede seeks to teach by
giving examples in the Ecclesiastical History is directed towards the
particular circumstances of England in his own day and the nature of his
work can be fully understood only in relation to these.
The Ecclesiastical History was intended to reach a lay as well as a clerical
audience. It is the only one of Bede's works to be dedicated to a layman,
Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria 729-37 or 38; he had been sent a draft to
comment upon. It is not known whether he or other laymen were
capable of reading it. 5 A few may have been, but in any case Bede's
references to those who were either to read or to hear it suggest that he
did not expect knowledge of it to be confined to the literate but rather
that it would be read out and, presumably, translated. 6 Offa, king of
Mercia 756-97, had a copy of the Ecclesiastical History and it was the only
one of Bede's works which Alfred had translated.37 No doubt Bede
knew and intended that its main audience would be clerical. But the
English Church contained too many nobles and was too dependent upon
kings to be indifferent to the needs and interests of secular rulers. Much
of the Ecclesiastical History was intended to show how the needs of kings
could be fulfilled and where their true interests lay.
England in Bede's day was divided into a number of kingdoms whose
relative power fluctuated and whose rulers lacked security. In the course
of the seventh century the dynasties of Kent, East Anglia, Mercia,
Northumbria and Wessex had in turn been the most powerful in England.
All at some stage fell from greatness, some to recover it later, others
not. All kings had enemies inside as well as outside their kingdoms.
Aethelbald of Mercia, whose superiority south of the Humber was
recognised at the time when Bede completed the Ecclesiastical History,
was to die at the hands of his own bodyguard. A major theme of the
probably near-contemporary poem Beowulf is that the wages of greatness
and heroism is death. The poet constantly reminds his audience that the
great kings and kingdoms with which he is concerned all came to
34
Ibid., chapter IV; H.E. V, pp. 12-14.
35
Aldfrith, Ceolwulf s predecessor, was literate; laymen brought up in such a
household as Wilfred's might have become so, Eddius, ed. Colgrave, op. cit., p. 44.
Wilfred himself was literate well before he was ordained priest and could have gone on
to a secular career, as others perhaps did after a similar beginning, Eddius, pp. 8, 10, 18.
36
E.g. H.E.,p. 6;V, 13, p. 313.
37
D. Whitelock, After Bede (Jarrow Lecture 1960, n.p., n.d.), p. 11.
38
disaster. English kings had to struggle hard to stay successful, and
alive, in a very dangerous world. It is a question what part the Church
and Christianity played in this struggle and it was a question then what
part they could and should play. The acceptance of Christianity in the
seventh century was part of the process by which England grew more
civilized under the influence of those parts of the Continent where the
wreck of Roman civilisation had been less complete than it had been in
Britain. The Church was successful in England partly because it suited
the needs and aspirations of kings. It made some contribution to royal
government, which may have had to face new problems in the seventh
century as some dynasties built up kingdoms of a size unprecedented
since the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. It must in some degree
have changed kings' views of themselves and of their functions. But if
kings owed something to the Church, the Church was very dependent
upon kings and by the time that Bede wrote some kings were seeing
their interest in exploiting rather than in protecting it. Although the
English Church had a unity which transcended the boundaries of indi-
vidual kingdoms and although it always in some degree acted in
accordance with its own principles rather than with royal demands it
was, nevertheless, very much subject to royal power. Bishops were
often or usually appointed in accordance with the will of a king. A
monastery which lacked royal favour could hardly hope to prosper.39
Kings were becoming covetous of the wealth of the Church and
demanding a share of it. According to St Boniface, Ceolred of Mercia
(709-716) and Osred of Northumbria (705-716) were the first kings to
violate the 'privilegia ecclesiarum in regno Anglorum'.40
The Ecclesiastical History is in part an attempt to demonstrate the role
of a Christian king, what the Church did for him and what he ought to
do for the Church. Bede repeatedly emphasises the connection between
Christianity and success. His account of the career of Cenwalh, king of
Wessex 643—674, is a good example. When Cenwalh succeeded in his
Christian father he rejected the 'fidem et sacramenta regni caelestis' and
not long after 'etiam regni terrestris potentiam perdidit'. While in exile
he became converted and then regained his kingdom. But when he
expelled his bishop his kingdom became subjected to severe and
frequent attacks by his enemies.
tandem ad memoriam reduxit, quod eum pridem perfidia regno pulerit, fides
agnita Christi in regnum revocaverit; intellexitque, quod etiam tune destituta
pontifice provincia recte pariter divino fuerit destituta praesidio.
38
A. G. Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 76-85, 103, 116, 119.
39
S. Bonifatii et Lulli Epistolae (M.G.H. Epistolae Selectae I), ed. M. Tangl (Berlin,
1916), no. 14.
40
Ibid., nos. 73, 78, 115; cf. E. John, Land Tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1960),
pp. 70-3.
41
H.E. Ill, 7.
Bede I 13
When Oswy of Northumbria was hard-pressed by his enemy Penda
and was unable to buy him off he turned to God. ' "Si paganus", inquit;
"nescit accipere nostra donaria, offeramus ei qui novit, Dominio Deo
nostro . . ,"' 42 And so he won a great battle. This campaign is one of
the rare events described by Bede of which we have an account in another
source. The Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius, a compilation
made in Wales probably in the early ninth century, tells a rather different
story. It too mentions an offer of treasure to Penda, but one which was
accepted. Nennius is later than Bede and the value of his work a matter
for speculation. But in this instance he seems to have had information
which Bede did not have or use and his employment of the apparently
archaic Welsh phrase atbret ludeu, 'the restitution of ludeu' (? Stirling),
to describe the incident suggests that it did take place and was well
known in Welsh tradition.43 The whole truth of the matter will never be
known. It is conceivable that there were two offers of treasure, one
accepted and one rejected. The suspicion remains, however, that
Nennius and Bede were describing the same incident and that Bede was
retailing an inaccurate version which suited his didactic purpose. Here
and constantly he is insistent that the benefits which the Church can
confer come in this world as well as in the next.
The king to whom Bede gives most attention is St Oswald and his
account of him is an excellent instance of how Christianity could be
presented to suit the needs and feelings of the rulers of England. If the
Church deprived the kings of Northumbria of the gods whom they had
regarded as their ancestors it soon provided their dynasty with a royal
saint, a hero of exactly the kind most appreciated by the Anglo-Saxons,
a great and famous man who met disaster nobly. It has been said that
the greatest of heroic German themes was that of the inevitable death of
the great, the theme of Beowulf itself in which 'as in a little circle of light
about their halls men with courage as their stay went forward to that
battle with the hostile world and the offspring of the dark which ends
for all, even the kings and champions, in defeat'. 44 Oswald was an
improved version of this type of hero. He came to greatness through
being a Christian:
non solum incognita progenitoribus suis regna caelorum sperare didicit; sed et
regna terrarum plus quam ulli maiorum suorum, ab eodem uno Deo, qui fecit
caelum et terram consecutus est.4
42
H.E. Ill, 24, p. 177.
43
K. Jackson, 'On the Northern British Section in Nennius', Celt and Saxon, op. cit.,
pp. 35-9. Jackson argues convincingly that the Historia is partly derived from written
sources embodying annals recorded during the seventh century.
44
J. R. R. Tolkien, 'Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics', Proceedings of the British
Academy, XXII (1936), p. 18 of the offprint.
45
H.E. Ill, 6, pp. 137-8.
Although he met his inevitable fate and died fighting bravely far
from home he lived elsewhere and retained power, which was
demonstrated in a concrete way by miracles. As a Christian saint he is a
somewhat curious figure. No miracles performed during his lifetime
were attributed to him (unless his victory at Heavenfield be counted
such); he died fighting an army which, though Bede does not tell us so,
may well have included Christians; as he died he was popularly thought
to have prayed, not for his enemies, but for the souls of his own men.46
As the product of interaction between Christianity and the needs of a
dynasty in a certain climate of thought and belief his cult is perfectly
intelligible. Oswald was not the only type of Christian king. A
surprising number of others in the seventh and eight centuries
abandoned their kingdoms in order to enter a monastery or to go to
Rome. Christianity was by no means always to a king's earthly
advantage. Aidan's remark when Oswine of Deira humbled himself
before him was a pregnant one. '"Scio", inquit, "quia non multo
tempore victurus est rex; nunquam enim ante haec vidi humilem
regem".'47 Bede recognised that there was more than one way in which
a king could be virtuous. But he makes the duty of a king while
reigning clear. It is to protect the Church, to observe its teaching and to
defend his people in battle. The happiest times since the English came
to Britain were, he says, those 'dum et fortissimos Christianosque
habentes reges cunctis barbaris nationibus essent terrori'.48 In the period
of which he is writing here, the last generation of the seventh century,
the 'barbari nationes' - he was probably thinking chiefly of the Picts -
were all more or less Christian. There is a point where his admiration
for the leader and defender of a Christian people meets a less specifically
devout delight in the strenuitas of a warrior king.49 It was not that Bede
was committed in a simple way to the interests of the kings of
Northumbria: he approved of a Mercian rebellion against Oswy and
disapproved of a raid made by Ecgfrith on Ireland. It was rather that he
was writing for an audience which saw Christianity in heroic terms and
which may have believed in a more than rational connection between
the virtue of a king and the prosperity of his people.
Bede's account of secular affairs is nearly always intended to show
how virtue and vice were rewarded in this world as well as hereafter, or
to present models of Christian kingship, or is simply incidental. For
example, we learn from him of one of Penda's attacks on Northumbria
only because it was involved with a miracle of Aidan's. He does not
46
H.E. Ill, 12, p. 151.
47
H.E. Ill, 14, p. 157; cf. Sigbert, king of Essex, said to have been murdered because
he would forgive his enemies, III, 22, 173.
48
H.E. IV, 2, p. 205.
49
Wallace-Hadrill, The Work of Gregory of Tours in the Light of Modern
Research', op. cit., pp. 60-2.
Bedel 15
even tell us the names of the British kingdoms against which the kings
of Northumbria fought. He says very little indeed about the political
events of the early eighth century, which were those about which he
must have known most. Indeed, he gives less space to his own times
than he does to any other period after 597; of the four books and twelve
chapters devoted to the period 596-731 the years from 687 to 731
receive one book only. The contrast with Gregory of Tours is
striking. Gregory devotes six of the ten books of his history to the
period of his own greatness, c. 573-591. The more he knew the more
he wrote. It seems with Bede the more he knew the less he wrote. A
clue to the reason for this may be given by his remark on the reign of
Ceolwulf - that it was so troubled that 'quid de his scribi debeat
quemve habitura sint fmem singula, necdum sciri valeat'.51 This is
partly, no doubt, an expression of his usual discretion, but also an
intimation that he was waiting for the pattern of God's judgments on
the past to emerge. Until it had done so he would not write.
If much of the Ecclesiastical History is directed towards the laity, more
is directed towards the clergy. The English Church in Bede's day
enjoyed a status within the universal Church which it was never to
reach again. Bede's own work indicates its learning. During his lifetime
Englishmen converted much of Germany and they were soon to reform
the Church in Gaul. Bede was proud of English achievements and
devoted much of his fifth book to describing the work of English
missionaries on the Continent, though he strangely says nothing of St
Boniface, who was becoming the greatest of them.52 But it is not for
nothing that much of the rest of the book consists of accounts of visions
of hell. Bede felt that much was amiss with the Church and in particular
in his own kingdom of Northumbria. We have the letter which he
wrote at very nearly the end of his life to Bishop Egbert, of York,
lamenting the ills which plagued the church.53 His criticisms were,
briefly, these. There were not enough bishops to ensure that pastoral
duties (which then fell largely on the bishop in person) were properly
discharged. Large dioceses were maintained because bishops were
anxious to exact all the dues they could. Some bishops were surrounded
by men given to laughter, jokes, tales, feasting and drink. Many priests
were ignorant, many monks ill-conducted. Monasteries were often
such in name only, being in fact the property of laymen who sought
chiefly the rights and exemptions associated with the monastic tenure of
land. The kingdom had become so demented with this 'mad error'
since the death of Aldfrith that its security was threatened since there
50
The period 596-687 occupies 239 pages of Plummer's edition, that after 687, 71.
51
H.E. V, 23, p. 349.
52
Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Europe, op. at., pp. 11-12.
53
Ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica I, 405-23.
was not enough land left to support the young men who should have
defended it.
It is not, of course, unusual in any period for the clergy to be wicked
and neglectful or for the laity to seek to batten on the Church. These
evils then took particular forms reflecting the nature of the Church and
of society in the seventh century and the relations between them.
Christianity had, after a slow start, spread very quickly in England. In
630 there was only one kingdom in which it was established at all
firmly. By 660 it was established for good in all but one. The Church
had become a native one just as quickly. Until 644 there was no English
bishop. By 678 there was only one who was not English, Theodore
himself. As the Church grew, and grew acclimatised, much of its way
of life seems to have been assimilated to that of lay society and the mores
of its rulers to those of the aristocracy from which so many of them
came. The career of Wilfrid affords the best illustration of many of the
circumstances and difficulties.54 Born in about 634 he entered the
monastery of Lindisfarne, thereafter going to Canterbury, Rome and
Gaul and returning to England in time to play a leading part at the
synod of Whitby in 664. He then became bishop in Northumbria,
exercising his functions there from 669 or somewhat earlier until 678
when king Ecgfrith expelled him. He remained a wanderer in England
and abroad for most of the rest of his life, with intervals during which
he was restored to some power in Northumbria from 686-7 to 691-2
and from 705-6 to his death in 709. He was certainly one of the greatest
ecclesiastics of his day. Ascetic, deemed a saint by some, the founder of
several monasteries according to the rule of St Benedict, he established
Christianity in Sussex and attempted to do so in Frisia. At the same
time his life and conduct were in some respects like those of a great
Anglo-Saxon nobleman. As he grew powerful he surrounded himself
with a great household, not only of clerks, but also of young men who
did not proceed to enter the Church.55 Like many of the great of his day
he had to go into exile more than once and he went surrounded by his
followers. He served more kings than one and so became very rich.
He gained much for the Church, but what he gained was organised as a
personal ecclesiastical empire. He owned many monasteries in several
kingdoms. To some he may not even have appointed subordinate
abbots; they were his and his alone.57 Some abbots put themselves
under his protection in almost the way that a nobleman might enter the
service of a king.58 He behaved towards those beneath him with the
54
The most recent extended account of Wilfred is that of Duckett, Anglo-Saxon
Saints and Scholars, op. cit., pp. 101-216.
55
Eddius, ed. Colgrave, op. cit., pp. 44, 48, 50, 94.
56
Ibid., pp. 16, 36, 48, 82-4, 136, 140.
57
Ibid., p. 134.
58
Ibid., p. 44.
Bedel 17
generosity expected of a ruler. When he went to visit all his abbots in
the south he either increased their livelihood with grants of land or
rejoiced their hearts with money.59 He is difficult for us to judge, as
Bede seems to have found him difficult to judge. Active, munificent
and it may be holy he was nevertheless very much part of a noble
society which cared greatly for power and show, the possession of a
loyal comitatus and the opportunity to exchange rich gifts. His career
was in some respects unparalleled and may have owed something to
Merovingian example. But in its reflection of the relations between the
Church and the world it is typical of much that went on in Bede's day.
Beowulf was almost certainly written in a monastery, probably at some
time in the eighth century. Its learned author was a Christian; the
feeling which inspires it is only intermittently so and is very much that
of a warrior nobility. Even Cuthbert, one of the most ascetic of saints,
had as his pectoral cross a jewel worthy of a king, or else it was thought
appropriate that he should be buried with one. The Church in Bede's
day was not one in which it is, or was always, easy to draw the
distinction between the lay and the clerical or even between good or
evil.
Bede offered it models. Of the many lives of saints included in his
history three seem to be particularly intended to give guidance to
monks and bishops in their relations with the secular world, those of
John of Hexham, Cuthbert and above all Aidan. If the high ecclesiastics
of Bede's day 'immensum rerum secularium pondus et vectigal
exigunt' Aidan and his immediate successors at Lindisfarne had 'nil
pecuniarum absque pecoribus'.61 When he died Wilfrid had thought it
necessary for his abbeys to have treasures with which to buy the favour
of kings and bishops.6 Aidan gave 'potentes' nothing but food when
they came to see him. The money they gave him he gave to the poor or
used to ransom captives. There was, Bede thought, all too much
ecclesiastical drinking and entertaining in his own time, but in those
days 'tota cura cordis excolendi, non ventris'. If the king and his
followers came to a monastery 'simplici tantum, et cotidiano fratrum
cibo contend, nil ultra quaerebant'. 63 In the letter to Egbert Bede
complained that there were many villages and hamlets 'in montibus
. . . inaccessis ac saltibus dumosis positi' which had not so much as seen
a bishop for years 'quorum tamen ne unus quidem a tributis antistiti
reddendis esse possit immunis'.64 But Aidan and Cuthbert had taken
59
Ibid., p. 140.
60
The Relics of St. Cuthbert, ed. C. F. Battiscombe (Oxford, 1956), pp. 308-25.
61
In Esdram et Nehemiam . . . Expositio, ed. Giles, Bedae Opera Omnia IX, 21 (qu.
Carroll, op. cit., p. 149n), H.E. Ill, 27, p. 190.
62
Eddius, p. 136.
63
H.E., III, 27, p. 190-1.
64
Ed. Plummer, p. 410.
pains to tour the country to preach and teach and it was to just such
places that Cuthbert had particularly gone.
Solebat autem ea maxima loca peragrare illis praedicare in viculis qui in arduis
asperisque montibus procul positi. 5
Bede describes the lives of these saints and in particular that of Aidan
not simply as good examples but as good examples in strong contrast to
the conduct of the Church in his own day - 'vita illius a nostri
temporibus segnitia distabat'.66 It is noticeable how much he stresses
those aspects of Aidan's conduct which defied the customs of Anglo-
Saxon society which had so powerful and inevitable an effect upon the
Church, in particular entertainment and gift exchange. Hospitality was
of the greatest importance to the Anglo-Saxons. It was of the essence of
kingship for the king to dine with his nobles in his great hall. In their
turn nobles frequently entertained kings. At all levels of society public
or communal entertainment was a most important part of life.
Similarly with the exchange of gifts. Even Cuthbert thought of it in his
last hours when he asked to have the priest with him who had been
accustomed to serve him
ideoque donationum acceptationumque eius omnium conscius erat indubius.

Quern ob id maxime secum manere voluit, ut si cuiuslibet acceptis muneribus
digna recompensatione non respondisset, illius admonitione recoleret et
priusquam obiret, sua cuique restitueret.67
Thus much of the Ecclesiastical History is by implication a criticism of

the Church in Bede's own day and expresses his longing for a return to
a primitive simplicity which he thought had existed only a short time
before. He may well have realised that if the Church was to survive it
had to involve itself more with the world than he would wish. He
remarks of Putta, Bishop of Rochester, who after his church and its
possessions had been ravaged by Aethelred of Mercia, retired
elsewhere.
nihil omnio de restaurando episcopatu suo agens; quia, sicut et supra diximus,
magis in ecclesiasticis quam in mundanis rebus erat industrius.68
It is a slightly curious but a revealing way of putting it. His sympathies

clearly lay with Putta; he thought the world was bad and the Church
too much part of it. He wanted a poverty, simplicity and devotion
65
H.E. IV, 25 (27), p. 270.
66
H.E. Ill, 5, p. 136.
67
Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, op. cit., p. 276.
68
H.E. IV, 12, p. 228.
Bedel 19
which, if they had ever characterised the English Church, were never to
do so again.
Bede's account of the Church in the Ecclesiastical History is
distinguished by great discretion. While his commentaries contain
numerous references to the shortcomings of the Church and in his letter
to Egbert he is open and violent in denunciation he has very little to say
directly about the sins of the clergy in his history. A few sinful clerics
are mentioned, but, Britons apart, almost always incidentally. His
account even of Ceolred and Osred, kings who, so we learn elsewhere,
oppressed the Church, is limited to the dates of their respective
accessions and deaths. The nearest he comes in the Ecclesiastical History
to the long account and denunciation of fictitious monasteries in the
letter to Egbert is the cryptic statement that so peaceful are the times
that many Northumbrians have preferred to enter monastries rather
than to exercise the arts of war. 'Quae res quern sit habitura fmem,
posterior aetas videbit.'69 Similarly in his Lives of the abbots of
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Bede makes no reference to the incident
described in the anonymous biography of Ceolfrid - which he used — of
Ceolfrid's leaving the abbey partly because of the behaviour of certain
nobles, who could not endure his regular discipline.70 Had we to rely
on the Ecclesiastical History for our knowledge of the Church in the first
generation of the eighth century we should know little of it, and still
less of Bede's severe judgment on it. There can be little doubt that
Bede's failure to describe the conduct of those of his contemporaries of
whom he disapproved was deliberate. In his commentary on the Book
of Samuel he is explicit that it is wrong publicly to denounce even evil
priests:
nos quoque in exemplum beati Samuhelis erga tales modeste agere neque eos
traducere oportet quos incorrigibiles et divino iam iudicio non dubitamus esse
damnandos, maxima si hos aliquo gradu ecclesiastico.
and
docet quanta reverentia sit divinis adhibenda sacramentis quamvis per

malorum manum dispensatis, quantus personis sacri altaris officio mancipatis
honor impendendus, quantum ab harum laesione quamlibet male viventium
propter insigne gradus sit cuiuslibet temperanda praesumptio . . . Cavendum
ergo ne episcoporum, presbiterorum, diaconorum famam passim lacerare et
attaminare praesumamus.71
He clearly did not think it appropriate to enlarge on the deficiencies of

69
H.E. V, 23, p. 351.
70
Baedae Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, I, 390.
71
Ed. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latine CXIX, op. cit., pp. 135, 244-5;
Carroll, p. 150.
the clergy in a work such as the Ecclesiastical History which was intended
for a fairly wide audience. A letter to another cleric such as that to
Egbert was another matter, though even there he mentions no names.
Others of his day were not so backward, like the monk who wrote to a
friend describing a vision of hell where many sinners had appeared in
torment, among them 'your abbot'. 72
Bede's discretion is most apparent in his treatment of Wilfred.73 He
had access to some and probably the whole of the biography of Wilfrid
attributed to Wilfrid's clerk, Eddius Stephanus. His account differs,
however, from that of Eddius. While he adds to Eddius's descriptions
of Wilfrid's defence of Roman orthodoxy and of his conversion of
Sussex he says nothing of the important part which Wilfred played in
Merovingian politics after 658 and his account of the struggle for
ecclesiastical power in Northumbria is shorter and differs in emphasis.
Eddius maintains that Wilfrid was wronged not only by kings Ecgfrith
and Aldfrith but by bishops, and, in particular by archbishops
Theodore and Berthwald. Bede does say briefly that several bishops
were involved in Wilfrid's expulsion in 691 but otherwise presents the
disputes as between Wilfrid and the kings of Northumbria alone,
saying nothing of the parts played by the archbishops of Canterbury.
He omits any mention of the synod of Austerfield (?703) at which,
according to Eddius, the bishops led by the archbishop behaved
aggressively and disingenously towards Wilfrid. He does not mention,
as Eddius does, that Wilfrid was imprisoned for nine months by
Ecgfrith, c. 680 and he gives a different account of the circumstances of
Wilfred's appointment to a Northumbrian see in 664.
These differences have for long attracted the attention of historians. R.
L. Poole, in what remains the standard account of them, came to the
conclusion that in the matters at issue Bede was almost always right and
Eddius almost always wrong.74 But, while it is true that Eddius was
committed to Wilfrid's cause and capable of misrepresentation to
support it, Poole assumes rather than demonstrates Bede's greater
veracity; and Bede's veracity is what is at issue, since Eddius is almost the
only contemporary source of any length with whom we are able to
compare him.75 There is a consistency in the ways in which Bede's
72
S. Bonifatii et Lulli Epistolae, op. cit., no. 115.
73
For Wilfrid, see pp. 16-17, above.
74
'St. Wilfrid and the See of Ripon', English Historical Review, XXXIV (1919), 1-24.
75
Thus it is extremely likely that Aethelwalh, king of Sussex, was already a
Christian before Wilfrid arrived, although Eddius implies that Wilfrid converted him
(Poole, pp. 6-7). But most of Poole's arguments for Eddius's unreliability are no more
than demonstrations that his account differs from that of Bede. His attempt to show
that Eddius's account of Wilfrid's role in Merovingian politics gives independent
evidence of his untrustworthiness is unconvincing. Eddius may well exaggerate the
importance of his hero. The sources for the events in question are, however, so poor
Bede I 21
account of Wilfrid differs from that of Eddius which suggests, not that
Bede was more truthful, but that he was more discreet and that his view
of the function of a historian was different.76 Wilfrid's career must have
presented Bede with great difficulties. He always speaks of Wilfrid with
great respect, and had reason to respect him, not least as the great
protagonist of Roman orthodoxy. But he probably disapproved of some
aspect of Wilfrid's career, which diverged considerably from his ideal. It
was in Wilfrid's presence that Bede had been accused of heresy and his
accusers - whom he describes, with the approach to venom which
characterises him when his own orthodoxy is questioned, as wanton,
drunken bumpkins - were probably members of Wilfrid's household.77
In any case Wilfrid's contentious life presented incidents which it was
difficult to make edifying, disputes between bishops, two worthy kings,
Ecgfrith, 'venerabilis er piissimus', and Aldfrith, Vir . . doctissimus',
flouting papal decisions, perhaps even two archbishops doing so.78 Part
of Wilfrid's misfortunes probably sprang from his resistance to
Theodore's policy of dividing up large sees. Bede thought such division
was necessary, but Wilfrid appears to have gained some degree of papal
and Eddius so important among them that it is not possible to demonstrate this.
Modern historians of the Merovingians have accepted Eddius's account in general, faute
de mieux it may be (e.g. W. Levison in his edition of Eddius, M.G.H., SS. Rer. Mer.,
VI, 163—263, L. Dupraz, Le Royaume des Francs (Fribourg-en-Suisse, 1948, chapter 4).
Poole's allegation that Eddius states Ebroin to have been alive when he was in fact dead
(p. 5) is not sufficient to discredit Eddius's general reliability on Merovingian affairs
even if it is justified and Eddius's account of Wilfrid's movements is in any case just
compatible with Ebroin's having been alive when he says he was (Dupraz, p. 352, n. 1).
76
Bede may have omitted any account of the synod of Austerfield because, as Poole
suggests, he knew Eddius's account to be wrong, but did not know enough to correct
it; but this is a strange argument to justify complete silence. It seems likely that he
similarly omitted Eddius's story of Wilfrid's imprisonment by Ecgfrith, not because he
knew it to have been wrong, but because it was unedifying. Poole's argument that the
incident is chronologically unacceptable is not strong. It depends on taking Bede's
statement that Wilfrid was in Sussex 'usque ad mortem Ecgfridi' quite literally, while it
need be no more than a general indication (cf. Plummer, ii, 319) and if taken otherwise
leaves an unnecessary gap in Wilfrid's career between 685 and 686-7, when the sources
agree that he was restored in Northumbria. The most famous crux is in connection
with the events of 664. Eddius says Wilfrid was made Bishop of all Northumbria but
that Chad was intruded in his place while he was abroad to be consecrated. Bede clearly
implies, though he is nowhere perfectly explicit, that Northumbria was divided
between them. The considerations which might lead one to incline to one side or the
other are very evenly balanced; for the extensive literature see Duckett, op. tit., p. 143
n. That Eddius was not alone in his view of Chad's position is suggested by a (? mid-
eighth century) verse martyrology mentioning all the bishops of York up to Wilfrid II
(718-732) except Chad, H. Quentin in Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne et de liturgie II,
642-4.
77
Bedae Opera de Temporibus, ed. C. W.Jones (Cambridge, Mass., 1943), p. 307, 'Sed
haec tristi mox admixtione confudit, addendo videlicet quod me audires a lascivientibus
rusticis inter hereticos per pocula decantari'.
78
Plummer, ii, p. 316.
79
support. It was a matter which was difficult to describe so as either to
encourage the good or deter the bad, for it is likely that in Bede's view
these disputes were between good men who were all in some degree in
the wrong. We do not have enough evidence to be sure to what extent he
or Eddius conceals or distorts the truth. The likelihood is that Eddius
gives a better, though partisan, account of what really happened while
Bede steers a careful course, giving additional information on the most
edifying aspects of Wilfred's career while omitting or playing down
those which were to the discredit of the virtuous; sometimes, perhaps, he
'through necessity concealed the truth by the use of very cautious
words'. It is worth observing that almost none of the passages in
Eddius which enable us to see how closely Wilfred's life in some aspects
resembled that of the secular nobility were used by Bede. He very
probably did not approve of them and, fond though he was of facts, his
tendency was to describe men and events that they appear timeless. If the
names were changed it would often be difficult to tell of which century or
of what kind of society he is writing.
A theme which stands out above all others in Bede's attempt to
instruct and edify through the Ecclesiastical History is that of the struggle
for the unity and orthodoxy of the Church. To record the nature and fate
of heresy was one of the most important functions of an ecclesiastical
historian. Eusebius had given much attention to so doing. As a
theologian Bede was concerned to refute many heretics and heresies -
Plummer collected references to twenty-nine. l As a historian he was
concerned with one heresy, Pelagianism, and one group of errors, those
of the Celtic Churches which departed from the orthodox custom,
especially in the calculation of the date of Easter. Pelagius's heresy of the
denial of the necessity of grace for salvation may have originated in the
British Isles. Bede thought that it had been imported in the fifth century,
and in his first book describes at some length two visits made by St
Germanus to extirpate it. Pelagian views seem to have continued to be
held in Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries and it may well have
been from Ireland that there came the two works of the Pelagian Julian of
Eclana and the one of Pelagius himself to which Bede had access.82 The
first book of his commentary on the Song of Songs was devoted to the
refutation of Julian. His account of Pelagianism and its defeat in the fifth
century was then of more than historical significance; the evidence he
79
This policy probably led to disputes of which Bede only hints, see c. ix of the
decrees made at Hertford (H.E. IV, 5, p. 216) and Bede's reticent account of the
deposition of Bishop Wynfrid, which may have been connected with the division of his
see (IV, 3, p. 212; IV, 6, p. 218; ii, p. 216).
80
As he thought King David might have done, Carroll, p. 152.
81
Plummer, pp. hdi-lxiii n.
82
Hughes, 'Irish Monks and Learning', op. cit., pp. 62, 72; H.E. II, 19, pp. 122-4;
Laistner, 'The Library of the Venerable Bede', op. cit., pp. 252, 265.
Bede I 23
gives of God's condemnation of it in the past was a useful lesson for his
own day.
The errors which received most attention from Bede were those of
the Celtic Churches which diverged from Roman customs. The most
important difference was that on the calculation of the date of Easter.83
It was regarded not as minor point of discipline, but as a rift in the unity
of the Church with serious doctrinal implications. For such a
theologian as Bede, always seeking mystical interpretations, the
movement of Easter and its proper calculation - and no one knew the
proper calculation better than he did - was loaded with the weightiest
significance. Consider, for example, the words Bede attributes to the
dying Cuthbert who warns his companions to have no communion
with those who depart from the unity of Catholic peace Vel pascha non
suo tempore celebrando, vel perverse vivendo'.84 A considerable part of
the Ecclesiastical History is devoted to the subject. In the second book we
are told how Augustine attempted to induce the Britons to accept the
Roman usages or to assist the evangelisation of the English. He failed
and prophesied that the recalcitrant Britons would perish at the hands of
the English. Bede records with some relish the fulfilment of this
prophesy when Aethelfrith massacred the monks of Bangor. Here, as in
his use of Gildas's account of the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth
century, Bede is able to reconcile two loyalties by showing his pagan
ancestors to have been the instrument of God's revenge. He goes on to
describe later attempts to persuade the Britons to accept the Roman
Easter. The climax of the third book is his famous account of the synod
of Whitby at which Oswy agreed that Roman usages should prevail in
Northumbria, while those who did not accept them left. In the fifth
book Bede now explains how lona, northern Ireland and the king of the
Picts were converted to a proper view - southern Ireland had become
orthodox long since. The emphasis given to the Easter controversy
throughout the Ecclesiastical History is clear. It receives the longest
chapter in the third book and the longest in the fifth. The chapter which
describes the conversion of lona is the last in the whole except for that
which gives a final survey of the general state of Britain. It must have
given particular satisfaction to Bede to record the acceptance of
Catholic unity by the house whence had come Aidan and the Irish
missionaries whom he so much admired, but whose adherence to
unorthodox usages he so much deplored. The battle for Roman
uniformity was still not completely won at the time when he wrote.
The Britons remained 'inveterati et claudicantes'.85 As with
83
For what was at issue see e.g. J. K. Kenney, Sources for the Early History of Ireland I
(New York, 1929), pp. 210-17.
84
Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, op. cit., p. 284.
85
H.E. V, 22, p. 347.
Pelagianism, so with the Easter controversy, Bede was writing not
only an account of the past, but a tract for his own times.
Bede's preoccupation with the defence of orthodoxy and his distrust
of the Britons who had erred, and in his own day still and alone
continued to err, may have influenced his selection of subject-matter
and coloured his account of what he selected. As always the lack of
other sources prevents reasonable certainty as to how far this was so.
Thus Nennius gives an account of the conversion of Northumbria quite
at variance with that of Bede; it was accomplished, he says, by the
British Church, Edwin being baptised by Rhun, son of Urien, a
member of the royal dynasty of the northern British kingdom of
Rheged. Until recently most scholars have rejected this story. Nennius
is later than Bede, less scholarly, and recounts much that is fabulous. A
considerable part of Bede's account of the conversion of Northumbria
must be broadly true; he can hardly have fabricated the letters of Pope
Honorius to Edwin and his queen which help to confirm his account.
But Professor Jackson and Mrs Chadwick have recently argued that
Nennius's tale should be taken more seriously.86 It is consistent with
the fragments of knowledge which we have about the rulers of Rheged
and about Edwin's relations with the Britons. Much of this information
inspires more interest than confidence, but it is not negligible. In
particular Nennius gives another piece of information about the
relations between the royal houses of Rheged and Northumbria,
namely that King Oswy had two wives, Riemmelth, whose descent is
given and who seems to have been a member of the royal house of
Rheged, and Eanfled, daughter of Edwin. Bede mentions the second,
but not the first. That Nennius's information on this was accurate is
suggested by the occurrence of what seems to be an Anglo-Saxon
version of the first wife's name at about the right place in the 'list of
names of the queens and abbesses of Northumbria' in the, presumably
independent, Liber Vitae of Durham.87 This fragment of evidence by no
means proves Nennius's account of the conversion of Northumbria to
have been true. But it does suggest relationships between Northumbria
and its British neighbours of which Bede tells us, through ignorance or
design, nothing; and it raises the suspicion that the British Church did
play a more important part in the conversion of Northumbria than his
account, which allows it none, indicates.
The problems involved in assessing Bede's account of the conversion
of Northumbria are characteristic of those which arise in connection
with the Ecclesiastical History. Bede was very learned and very
86
K. Jackson, 'On the Northern British Section of Nennius', N. K. Chadwick, The
Conversion of Northumbria: a Comparison of Sources' in Celt and Saxon, op. cit., pp.
20-62, 138-66.
87
Jackson, pp. 41-2.
Bede I 25
intelligent. His aim was partly simply to describe the history of the
Church in England and his care in collecting evidence and the methods,
derived from those of Eusebius, with which he handled it enabled him
to perform this task in a manner which makes this work more
scholarly, in the modern sense, than that of any other Dark Age
historian. This aspect of his work has always and rightly attracted
attention and praise. But his principal intention was not just to record
the past, but to use it to teach lessons to the present, mainly by treating
seventh-century England as a gallery of good examples. Excellent
instances of the reaction he sought are to be found in the work of
Victorian historians, for example W. Bright - 'We think not only of the
noble earnestness of Ethelbert, of the heroic sanctity of Oswald, of the
sweet humility of Oswin but of the genuine conversions of Eadbald and
Kenwalch . . .', etc.88 The differences in the historiographical fortunes of
the seventh-century England and seventh-century Gaul, the one often
being regarded as moving and edifying, the other as repellent and
vicious, are attributable not so much to one society's being nobler, or
nicer, than the other as to Bede's aims and tastes being different from
those of Prankish historians.89
Bede wrote then not only in the Eusebian tradition but also in that of
hagiography. The principles of hagiographers were largely contrary to
those of scholarship, though they sometimes adopted a misleadingly
scholarly air, setting store by citing evidence for things which did not
happen or which did not happen at the time or to the persons they
alleged. They wrote in the attitude of mind with which the Bible is now
often interpreted. Moral truth, not literal truth, was what mattered.90
Emphasis was placed on the need for belief, not on the advantages of
doubt. 'Vera lex historiae' is, says Bede, 'simpliciter ea quae fama
vulgante collegimus ad instrutionem posteritatis litteris mandare.' He
prides himself that he has used an earlier life of Cuthbert 'simpliciter
fidem historiae quam legebam accomodans'.91 Hagiographers tended to
turn the men and events they described into types, 'Vous lui demandez
un portrait', says Fr Delehaye of the hagiographer, 'il vous repond par
un programme'. 92 Bede's account in the Ecclesiastical History of such
88
Chapters of Early English Church History (Oxford, 1878), p. 435.
89
If Grosjean is right in identifying Agilbert, bishop of Dorchester 650-60, with the
Agilbert who helped to lure an enemy of Ebroin's to his death by swearing an oath on
an empty reliquary ('La date du Colloque de Whitby,' op. cit., p. 251) a Prankish
historian could reveal other qualities in this man than the eruditio and the industria to
which Bede refers (H.E. Ill, 7, p. 140).
90 E.g. Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles, op. cit., chapter 4; B. Colgrave, 'The
Earliest Saints' Lives Written in England', Proceedings of the British Academy XLIV
(1958), 35-60; and in general H. Delehaye, Les legendes hagiographiques, 4th ed.
(Brussels, 1955).
91
H.E., pp. 7-8; Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles, pp. 82-3.
92
Delehaye, p. 24.
saints as Aidan and Cuthbert is almost purely hagiographical and
contrasts with the more factual and sober treatment of other
biographies in his Lives of the Abbots.93 It is a question how far what
appear to be the more purely historical parts of the Ecclesiastical History
are affected by his didactic purposes. These purposes certainly
determined his selection of subject-matter; it can hardly be doubted that
he was very discreet and sometimes suppressed that which could not
edify. But one must wonder how far his account of the course of events
is affected by his believing that he ought to give the version which best
demonstrated the truth of his faith rather than that which best
corresponded with the truth, and how far his judgment of what was
likely was affected by his conviction of what was appropriate. He is so
far our only source for so much of what he describes that no firm
judgment on these matters is possible. But a comparison of Bede with
such other sources as Eddius and Nennius, questionable though they
are, suggests that the veneration which he has so long so rightly been
accorded ought to be tempered by some mistrust. Historians have
sometimes been too ready to assume Bede's reliability as axiomatic
when it is the point at issue. It is not even safe to assume that the
attitudes and emphases of the Ecclesiastical History fully reflect Bede's
personal views. He thought it the duty of a teacher to suit his teaching
to his audience.94 Some of the apparant crudities in his approach to
Christianity, for example the repeated emphasis on its connection with
worldly success and on the importance of miracles, may indicate not so
muchj.
his 9own
5
view of his faith as his Jjudgment
O
of the limitations of his
audience.
Clear, almost simple, though the Ecclesiastical History is it is the
product of a complex mind working under difficult circumstances. On
the one hand Bede was concerned for the truth, interested in hard facts,
excellently equipped technically and writing with the good model of
Eusebius before him. On the other hand he was using history to teach
lessons which he felt to be badly needed; he was writing partly not as a
historian but as a hagiographer; he had to suit his work to his audience
and present it in such a way that it moved men less learned and less
subtle than he. He was a barbarian, one of the first handful of his people
to have become literate, yet very learned in a tradition which sprang
from the remote world of the Roman empire. He was very devoutly,
indeed sternly, Christian, yet writing in and for a Church which had
accommodated itself to the ways of its world. He sought to recall it to
93
Jones, Saints' Lives and Chronicles, pp. 29, 54.
94
Carroll, p. 245; H.E. Ill, 5, p. 137.
95
The attitude towards physical miracles of some of the Fathers, including even
Gregory the Great, who records so many of them, was one of some reserve, e.g. Jones,
Saints' Lives and Chronicles, pp. 76-7, Carroll, pp. 196 ff.
Bede I 27
what he thought to have been its primitive simplicity while treating it
with the respect and discretion which any church deserved. Many of
the difficulties in assessing the Ecclesiastical History derive from those
inherent in Bede's intellectual position and in the nature of his task.
Whatever the difficulties, few of those who read his book and even
fewer of those who work on it fail to come to admire it. Bede had and
has the power to seize the imagination of his reader and to transport
him to a strange world; strange because it is so distant in time and
circumstances, even stranger because it is a world so directly dominated
by God, where ordinary historical causality hardly applies. Most Dark
Age historians provoke a sense, usually an overwhelming sense, of
superiority. We know better, we are cleverer than they. Bede defies
patronage. Remote, almost bizarre, though his view of history is he
expounds it in the manner, and it is more than just the manner, of an
educated, rational and moderate man. The Ecclesiastical History is not
only the record of most of what we shall ever know of a century or
more of English history, but a monument to the extraordinary skill and
power of Bede.96
96
I am very grateful to Mr M. W. Fredericksen, Mrs B. Mitchell and Mr J. M.
Wallace-Hadrill for reading a draft of this paper and for their helpful comments.
For a note on more recent work on Bede see pp. 47-8 below.
1. Frontispiece of the Codex Amiatinus, produced at Wearmouth orjarrow
before 716. (Florence, BibliotecaMedicea-Laurenziana, MS. Amiatinus I, f. 4)
2
Bede II
Bede was born about 673 and died in 735. He entered the monastery of
Monkwearmouth (Wearmouth), in Northumbria, at the age of seven,
and the remainder of his life was spent there and in the sister monastery
of Jarrow. Today he is famous chiefly as the historian of the conversion
of England. But he also wrote on almost every other branch of
Christian learning; in his own day, and for long afterwards, his
commentaries on the Bible and his treatises on chronology and other
subjects were as much valued as his history.
It is remarkable that the most notable scholar the Western Church
produced at that time should have lived in Northumbria, nearly at the
extremity of the known world, and that he should have sprung from a
people who had very recently been pagan and illiterate. In Bede's day,
although most of the churches of Europe were very old, the English
church was very new. In Gaul, Italy and Spain, Christianity survived
the fall of the Roman Empire and won over the barbarian conquerors.
But the English (Anglo-Saxon) people who, after the departure of the
Romans in the early fifth century, occupied the southern and eastern
parts of Britain, for long remained pagan and little affected by Roman
civilisation.
Christianity had been quite strongly established in Britain while the
Romans ruled there. It survived the Roman evacuation, in those areas
of the west and north where the native British population remained free
from Anglo-Saxon rule. The Christian Britons seem to have made little
attempt to convert the invaders, Christianity was brought to the
Anglo-Saxons by missionaries from overseas, most of them Italians or
Irishmen.
The first mission of which we know is that of Augustine, who
arrived from Rome in 597. He established Christianity in Kent, and he
and his Italian followers attempted to convert other kingdoms. Their
success was limited and insecure. For a generation the fate of
Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons hung in the balance. Thereafter
the faith spread quickly and prospered. By 660 it was established in
nearly every kingdom. This success was due largely to the efforts of
Irish misssionaries. Christianity had flourished in Ireland from the fifth
century, and by the end of the sixth the Irish church was becoming
notable both for its learning and for its missionary enterprise. The most
important Irish mission to England was that led by Aidan, who came to
29
Northumbria in 635 from the Irish monastery of lona, off the west
coast of Scotland. Aidan founded the monastery of Lindisfarne in
Northumbria. From this base the Irish evangelised Northumbria and
much of the English Midlands. At the same time the Roman
missionaries based in Canterbury remained active in the southeast; a
few years previously they had even made an attempt to convert
Northumbria, though with only temporary success. Meanwhile other
missionaries, owing allegiance neither to Canterbury nor to lona,
appeared elsewhere in England.
Thus by 660 Christianity had been very successful in England; but
English Christians were not united in reorganising a common
ecclesiastical authority. Some acknowledged the authority of the
archbishop of Canterbury in England and that of the Pope over the
whole church. Others looked to Lindisfarne and to lona. It may well be
that some elements in the church recognised no superior authority at
all. Before long, all were to recognise the supremacy of Canterbury and
of Rome.
In 664 the Irish church in Northumbria accepted the Roman mode of
calculating Easter, and an important cause of disunity was thus
removed. Even more significant in the unification of the English church
was the influence of the pontificate of Theodore, archbishop of
Canterbury from 668 to 690. Theodore was a native of Asia Minor and
about sixty-seven years old when he arrived in England. Despite these
disadvantages he established the authority of Canterbury over all the
other English sees. Other great changes came about at the same time.
Centres of learning grew up at Canterbury and elsewhere, and many
new monasteries were founded. The English church, which had been
largely directed by foreign missionaries, became a native one, nearly all
of whose bishops were English. By the end of the century the English
were themselves sending missionaries to western Germany.
Bede's own monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow played an
important part in this prosperous and revolutionary period. Founded in
674 by Benedict Biscop, a Northumbrian nobleman, it was
distinguished by its learning, its close connections with Rome and
Canterbury, and its size. Its founder endowed it with a great library. A
frequent visitor to Rome, he was closely associated with Theodore and
was for a time abbot of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul in
Canterbury. By 716 his foundation held six hundred or more monks.
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow was outstanding among the monasteries of
Northumbria, and there were few which could rival it in the whole of
England.
Bede's work reflects the exceptional circumstances of his house. Its
library enabled him to become very learned. The study of the literature
of pagan Greece and Rome was unimportant for him, although he had
access to at least a few of the Latin classics. His learning was in
Bede II 31
Christian Latin literature, whose core was the works of the Latin
Fathers: Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory. This literature
presented an account of God, of man, and of the universe which was
complete, unified, and satisfying. Thanks to its double inheritance from
Judaism and from Greece and Rome, Christianity had developed an
intricate and sophisticated intellectual system. Centred on the elaborate
interpretation of the Bible to reveal many layers of meaning, it
established relationships between every kind of knowledge and showed
how all proclaimed the same divine truths. By Bede's time few could
read this literature with full understanding. Literacy was rare and
unbroken traditions of learning much rarer. There were learned men in
the seventh century, especially in Spain and Ireland, but they were not
numerous — though it is true that we can learn much more easily of the
minority of scholars who wrote than of the majority who simply read.
During the Dark Ages Christianity might have lost its theology and
have become for all what it became for nearly all: a collection of rituals,
precepts, and crude arguments. That it survived as more than the
barbarized detritus of a religion is thanks to the preservation of the
Christian learning of the later Roman Empire and its continued study,
however faltering and by however few. The continuance of that
tradition was much more important in the intellectual history of
Europe than the incidental preservation of the classics. Bede played an
important part in continuing it. His wide range of works rested heavily
upon, and was intended to transmit, the learning of his predecessors.
As a historian Bede found his models and sources in the histories
written by Christians in and after the fourth century. Three features of
Christian historiography should be noticed. First, it owed very little to
the great historians of Greece and Rome. As Arnaldo Momigliano has
written, 'No real Christian historiography founded upon the political
experience of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus was
transmitted to the Middle Ages.' The Christian historians made a fresh
start in new genres, and the change was not necessarily for the worse.
Second, there was no clear division between history and theology. All
knowledge was knowledge of God. Few, if any, learned men
specialised in history and certainly Bede did not. Most histories were
written by men who also wrote on other aspects of divine learning.
Third, there were several kinds of Christian history, and the different
genres were kept fairly distinct from one another. One author writing
in two different genres can give very different impressions of
himself.
Bede wrote in most of the historical genres known to him. The
contrast between two of them may be seen by comparing his chronicles
with his Life of St Cuthbert. His work in one genre is terse, packed with
facts, and dry; in the other it is discursive, not containing so much as a
date, and very readable. Bede wrote two chronicles, a short one which
formed part of his book On the Measurements of Time (703) and a longer
and better one which was included in On the Computation of Time (725).
Chronicles were little more than lists of dates and events. Bede's short
chronicle is an extreme example. A typical passage is this:
The third age contains 942 years. Abraham came into Canaan at the age of 75. At
the age of 100 Abraham begat Isaac. For he first begat Ishmael, from whom the
Ishmaelites. Isaac at the age of 60 begat Jacob. The kingdom of the Argives
begins. Jacob begat Joseph at the age of 90. Memphis in Egypt founded. Joseph
lived for ninety years. Greece began to have crops under Argos. The captivity of
the Hebrews for 147 years. Cecrops founded Athens. Moses ruled Israel for
forty years. Sparta founded . . .
Such works seem neither enlightening nor agreeable to the modern

reader. Nevertheless they were very important in Christian
historiography. The genre was established by Eusebius, bishop of
Caesarea (<:.260-c.340), and thereafter numerous chronicles were
compiled. They indicate one of the consequences of the spread of
Christianity in the Roman world. Educated Christians knew two
traditions of world history, one pagan and the other Christian and
Jewish. Chronicles correlated the two so that the reader might learn, for
example, what was happening to the Jews at the time of the foundation
of Rome. One of the great distinctions between pagan and Christian
scholars in history, as in much else, was that the Christians knew more,
or thought they did; and they had a philosophy which enabled them to
interpret all they knew. For example, the Bible afforded data which
made it possible to calculate the date of the Creation.
More important, a chronicle, in summarising the whole history of
the world, made it possible to display it as a Providential design. This
could be done in various ways, but Bede was chiefly attracted by the
doctrine of the Ages of the World. Each of his two chronicles was
written as part of the chapter on Ages in a treaties on chronology. The
history of the world so far was divided into six ages. Each
corresponded to one of the six ages of a man's life and also to one of the
days of Creation as described in Genesis. The sixth age had begun with
the birth of Christ, and its termination would mark the end of the
world. Bizarre though this theory now sounds, its comprehensiveness
in establishing connections between the life of man, the course of
history, creation, and judgement made it a very powerful one. Bede's
concern with the exact length of each of the ages made him very careful
about dates, and he was the first to correct the biblical chronology of
Eusebius. The purpose of such a chronicle as Bede's first one was
simply to sketch the history of the world in accordance with a
Providential interpretation. His much fuller second chronicle shows
how easily such a work could do more than this by serving as a vehicle
Bede II 33
for almost any kind of historical information.
The Life of St Cuthbert, which Bede wrote in about 720, is in a very
different genre, that of hagiography. It consists almost entirely of
beautifully told miracle stories and does not reveal even when its hero
was born or when he died. Books of this kind were numerous and more
influential than any other kind of history, if they can be called history.
They derive from great changes which came about in the Christian
church in and after the fourth century. In the third century, belief in
contemporary, as opposed to biblical, miracles was not widespread, at
least among the sophisticated. Belief in the frequent intervention of
God to produce physical miracles and in the omnipresence of devils and
angels became much more common from the fourth century. It seems
to have been associated with the spread of monasticism from the east.
Monks and miracles (together may have changed the Church as much
as the Reformation did when it sought to expel them) came in together.
One book, The Life of St Anthony by Athanasius, was of great
importance in the proliferation. Written in about 360 (in Greek, but
soon translated into Latin), it describes the life of Anthony, who lived
as a hermit in Egypt until his death in 356. It is simply an account of
virtues and marvels, vividly told. As the kind of Christianity which
Athanasius described spread, so did imitations of his book. Such lives
of the saints differed from one another in various respects but in general
conformed to type. They record in some detail the circumstances of
their subject's early life, his conversion to religion, his godly conduct,
and the manner in which he died. Their main concern is not mundane
details, but spiritual triumphs: the cures the saint wrought, the devils he
put to flight. Hagiographers were often careful to state their evidence,
as Bede does. The more remarkable the story, the more desirable it was
that it should be supported. Such statements are not necessarily
evidence of scholarly care, but went with this genre of writing. Saints'
lives were for edification rather than for record (they were often read
out, in whole or in part, on the saint's day), and their authors looked
more to the effect they would have in the future than to what had
actually happened in the past. Bede's Life of St Cuthbert is a typical and
very skilful piece of hagiography. He took a previous 'Life of Cuthbert'
by an anonymous monk, rewrote it, and modified it in certain respects,
inserting additional miracles and giving a much longer account of
Cuthbert's death. When he wrote in other genres he displayed great
interest in facts and in detailed information. In writing this life he gave
fewer facts, particularly topographical facts, than did his source.
Bede's greatest work, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
completed in 731 or 732, represents yet another genre of Christian
historiography. Its title recalls that of its model, The Ecclesiastical History
of Eusebius. In this work Eusebius described the history of the Church
from apostolic times until about 325. He sought to relate all the main
events in the life of the Church, saying something of the outstanding
Christians of each generation. Particular care was taken to record the
succession of bishops in the principal sees, the details of heretics and
heresies, persecutions and the passions of martyrs. As in his Chronicle so
in his History, Eusebius was the father of a new kind of historiography.
His works was distinguished from those of pagan historians not only by
its content but also by its methods, in particular by his extensive citation
of sources and his inclusion of many original documents. Here, too,
Christian scholarship broke new ground. Bede sought to do for the
church of England what Eusebius had done for the whole, and his
Ecclesiastical History much resembles his predecessor's in content and in
method.
Bede knew at least two other Christian histories of importance - The
Seven Books Against the Pagans by Orosius and The History of the Franks by
Gregory of Tours. They have to be considered beside his Ecclesiastical
History not so much because of their contribution to it as because of their
contrast with it. Orosius wrote his book in 417 to 418; it described and
interpreted the history of mankind from the Creation to his own day and
was intended as a riposte to those who accounted for the fall of Rome by
pointing to the rise of Christianity. Orosius collected catastrophes and
misfortunes to show that God had smitted the pagans hard, often, and
deservedly. His own times he argued to be better. For him, history fell
into a pattern, that of the Four Empires: Babylon, Macedonia, Carthage,
and Rome. The history of each of them had followed a similar course;
Rome and Babylon were especially alike, and 'the number seven by
which all things are decided' was demonstrated to have been very
important for both. The last empire, that of Rome, was shown to have
been established by God in preparation for the advent of Christ.
Orosius's scheme of explanation was crude, if elaborate. But his work
was orthodox and popular, and his large store of information was drawn
on by many, including Bede. Bede also followed him in beginning his
work with a geographical introduction. He did not follow him in
imposing a pattern upon history. For Orosius, Providence worked like a
machine. Bede shows God's purpose and judgment always at work, but
makes little attempt to schematize them.
Bede was not the first Christian historian to write on the history of
one people. The only such national historian whose work was certainly
known to him was Gregory of Tours (c. 540-594). Gregory's history
was in a sense an ecclesiastical history and has resemblances to Bede's.
But it is his contrast with Bede which impresses. Gregory's work is
very much that of a bishop of Tours, a great man who participated in
great events. He provides a detailed, scandalous, and vivid account of
affairs to indicate the power of St Martin and how he watched over his
own see of Tours. Bede was very much more detached. His concern
was to omit secular affairs and any kind of scandal. His descriptions of
Bede II 35
the miraculous are not intended to exalt his own monastery, and he
makes no attempt to demonstrate that saints protect their shrines and
followers in secular affairs. The temper of his work is entirely different
from Gregory's, and the comparison brings home to us that one of the
most remarkable things about The Ecclesiastical History is the number of
things which one would expect an eighth century historian to say
which Bede does not say.
In writing The Ecclesiastical History Bede looked back then to
Eusebius and to the beginnings of Christian historiography. There are,
indeed, important differences between his work and that of his
predecessor. There is nothing in Eusebius to correspond with the
geographical and historial introduction to his subject which Bede
provides in the first book of The Ecclesiastical History. Bede's continual
concern with the miraculous reflects a religious climate unlike that in
which Eusebius wrote. Bede had to pay more attention to secular
affairs, partly because the fortunes of Christianity were more closely
involved with those of secular powers than they had been in the early
days of the Church, and partly because Bede, and his sources, were
more concerned than was Eusebius to emphasise the judgments of God
on good and bad rulers. Furthermore, Bede is more concerned to be
directly edifying, to use history to teach particular moral lessons.
Nevertheless, Bede's history is, as its title implies, modelled on that of
Eusebius. Its dominant concern is the same: to describe the principal
events in the history of the Church, the succession of its bishops, its
heresies, and its saints. His technique, in particular his extensive use of
documents, often cited verbatim, also derives from Eusebius. Many of
his virtues are those of his model.
Bede's account of the history of his church often leaves the reader
admiring, but baffled. It is not hard to understand why The Ecclesiastical
History should have become famous. Important and interesting events
are described, and often made moving, by an extremely accomplished
storyteller. Bede's citation of sources, his care with dates, and his
inclusion of many documents argue his reliability. The impression is
reinforced by his calm and moderate tone. Bede seems both pious and
sound and has to a high degree the power of conviction. Nevertheless,
The Ecclesiastical History seems oddly diverse and incomplete. The
narrative of events is constantly broken by accounts of miracles and
visions. Sometimes Bede rambles, as in the fifth book where, having
mentioned Adomnan, abbot of lona, he proceeds to devote two
chapters to extracts from Adomnan's book on the Holy Places.
Disproportionate space seems to be given to controversy over the date
of Easter. Surprisingly little is said about Bede's own time, about which
one would suppose him to have known most. His book seems a
disjointed series of stories and documents held together by an
accomplished style.
The unevenness of Bede's narrative is partly to be explained by the
nature of his sources and by the way in which he used them. He was
able to use the work of earlier historians for the first book, which
describes the history of Britain from the time of Julius Csesar until the
coming of Augustine. In spite of the active search for materials, which
he describes in his Preface, it was not easy for him to find them for more
recent times. It was not normal in the seventh century for churches, let
alone kingdoms, to keep records of their doings. Bede probably had
some scanty annals from Kent and Northumbria, and a few royal genea-
logies and lists recording the lengths of the reigns of kings. For the most
part, he was dependent on letters, chiefly from Rome, on a handful of
saints' lives, and on numerous but doubtfully reliable oral traditions. He
did not feel it to be his duty to criticise his sources as a modern historian
would (although his theological work shows that he could have been
acute in such criticism). The true law of history is, he says, simply to
gather and record for the benefit of posterity such stories as are in circu-
lation. It was a new experience for Bede to write a book on a subject
about which no one had written before. His inclination was to follow
what others had written, and the result was patchwork. Where we know
what his sources were, and they have survived, he can be seen often to
have followed them word for word, or very nearly so. This is the case in,
for example I, xvii-xx, which comes from the life of St Germanus by
Constantius, and in III, xix, which conies from an anonymous life of
Fursey. One wonders how far Bede treated in the same way those of his
sources which are unknown to us, and whether The Ecclesiastical History
was not written by first establishing a chronological framework and
then hanging to it by such verbal hooks as 'At that time', 'In the
meantime', such materials as came to hand, frequently in the form in
which they came to hand.
Nevertheless, it will not do to dismiss The Ecclesiastical History as no
more than a collection of materials. Bede was both selective and subtle.
His principles of selection were largely those of Eusebius. For example,
like Eusebius he gave particular attention to heresy. But while Eusebius
had had numerous heresies to record, Bede had to deal with only one
heresy, Pelagianism, and one error, the adherence of some of the Celtic
churches to the wrong mode of calculating the date of Easter.
Bede has a long account of the Easter controversy in each of the last
four books of his history. It is at first sight not easy to understand why
he should have given so much attention to what appears to us as a
merely technical issue; for the practice of the Celts seems to have been
simply that which had been used elsewhere in the past but which had
become superseded. But Bede makes it very clear that the calculation of
the date of Easter was not merely a technical or isolated issue. The
movement of Easter was one of many things which argument in terms
of symbols (as we would say, but symbol is for us a limiting word,
Bede II 37
mysteries they would say) showed to be loaded with significance. Easter
had to be just at the equinox, for the lengthening days represented
Christ's triumph over the powers of darkness. It had to be in the first
month of the lunar year, for this was the month in which the world had
been created and in which it ought to be newly created. It had to be as
the moon was about to wane, for the moon turns from earth toward the
sun as it wanes, just as we should turn from earthly to heavenly things.
It was appropriate that Easter should always fall within a space of seven
days, for seven was a number of divine significance. Considered from
another point of view, Easter was to be calculated in such a way as to
fulfil both the Old Law of the Jews and the New Law of Christ. If it
was celebrated at exactly the right time, then all was in harmony.
Nothing can illustrate the gulf between Bede's thought-world and ours
more vividly than his views on Easter. Such views were not simple
popular piety. They formed part of an elaborate and not
unsophisticated system of thought, which brought all knowledge into
unity and to divine ends, and whose power depended on the capacity to
see an allegory as a mysterious truth rather than as an illustration or a
coincidence. Divergence between churches on such a matter as Easter
was not a trivial matter. It was a rent in the seamless garment, and it is
not surprising that Bede, who was by far the most learned man of his
day on computation, should have devoted much of his history to this
issue.
Bede's concern was not just to record certain kinds of information
and to refute certain kinds of error. His Preface emphasises that his
concern is to edify, to describe the good so that it may be followed and
the bad so that it may be shunned. The Ecclesiastical History was
probably intended for a wider audience than were most of Bede's
works, and is dedicated to a king. In his account of good kings (and no
laymen other than kings have more than an incidental role), Bede
shows how virtue was rewarded here and now as well as hereafter. It
was not only heavenly but also earthly kingdoms which Oswald and
Edwin gained. There are passages in which he makes his point in a way
that is forceful to the point of crudity. He shows that just as those who
adhered to the faith did well, so did those who abandoned it fail.
Edwin, who brought Christianity to Northumbria, lived in
unexampled peace and prosperity. His apostate successors perished
miserably and soon. Nevertheless, Bede prefers to dwell upon the
rewards of the good rather than on the punishments of the bad.
Cadwallon, king of the Britons, is condemned in strong language, but
briefly, and his violent and merited death is not dwelt upon. Even
Penda, the pagan terror of England in the middle of the seventh
century, is treated only incidentally, and Bede attributes worthy
sentiments to him. There is no long account of any bad Christian king;
indeed, no Christian English kings are said to have been bad, though
one or two royal crimes are mentioned.
It is remarkable of Bede's picture of Providence at work in politics
that, while he is clear that a causal connection between virtue and
success was easy to observe, he makes little effort to explain the whole
course of English history in Providential terms and to show God's
rewards and punishments to whole peoples. He might, in the manner
of Orosius, have chosen to show the pagan Saxon period as one of
disaster and misery. In fact, he had almost nothing to say about it -
though perhaps he did not know enough to say more. On only two
occasions does he elaborate on the punishment visited in this world
upon a sinful nation: in his account of Britain after the departure of the
Romans and in the story of how the Britons were punished for not
yielding to Augustine. In the first instance, his account and its emphasis
came straight from the sixth century British historian Gildas, in the
second, from some lost source. Although he adopted such views when
they occurred in his sources, he makes almost no independent attempt
to show that the Britons suffered for their persistence in the errors he
detested. The opportunity was there. He could have described the great
conquests made in the late seventh century by the West Saxons at the
expense of the Britons, and have presented them as those of God's
chosen people, accurate in their Easter reckonings. Instead, he merely
mentions the subjugation of some of the Britons and associates it with
their errors, very briefly, in V, xxiii. Similarly, although, as we know
from his Letter to Egbert, he disapproved of much that went on in the
Church in his own day, he does not elaborate on this in his history and
draw the moral that punishment was at hand, as some historians would
have done. Instead, Bede says nothing at all in his history about the sins
of the Church, but emphasises the peacefulness of his own times in
England. Even so, he does not say that the acceptance of Christianity
and orthodoxy have brought peace and prosperity. If the connection is
made it is by implication, and there are undertones of disquiet. Unlike
many of his predecessors, he found it hard to see a clear pattern in God's
judgments except where individuals were conerned. He is more
reserved, less vehement, perhaps more troubled.
If the Ecclesiastical History has many lessons for the laity, it has more
for the clergy. One of its principal functions is to set them good
examples. Bede's account of what the church of England had been in
the past is affected by his judgment of what it was and what it ought to
have been in his own day. In The Ecclesiastical History Bede has very
little to say about events in England after 690, and he does not make his
views on the contemporary church explicit. But, thanks to the preserva-
tion of his Letter to Egbert, written to the bishop of York in 734, we know
that some of them were unfavourable. The conduct of bishops, monks,
priests, and laity all left much to be desired. Avarice, neglect, and
ignorance were all too prevalent. His biblical commentaries shed further
Bede II 39
light on his attitudes. They showed him to have held strict views on the
proper conduct of the clergy, and in particular on clerical poverty. How
rich the clergy may properly be was, and remains, a subject for argu-
ment. Bede was adamant that they ought to be poor. Granted Bede's
preference for praising the good rather than denouncing the bad, and his
belief, made quite clear in his commentaries, that it is wrong publicly to
denounce the clergy, be they never so wicked, it seems that his reticence
in his history on the recent past of his church is largely to be explained by
his disapproval of some of its members and their acts.
Modern knowledge of the early eighth century church is very
incomplete, but the sources suffice to give some idea of those aspects of
its life to which Bede objected. Some bishops had become powerful in
the things of this world. Such a bishop as Wilfrid was wealthy in land,
in treasure, and in followers. Bede says bishops levied dues from every
village in their dioceses, and there is other evidence indicating that the
church had significant power to tax. There is some reason to suppose
that bishops exercised considerable jurisdiction over laymen. When
Bede says that Wine bought the see of London in about 666 (III, vii) it is
a fair deduction that episcopal office was already remunerative. Such
examples of clerical power can easily be paralleled on the Continent.
But there bishops had been established for centuries, had inherited
power from the days of the Empire, and had added to it as the Empire
collapsed. In England some bishops seemed to have gained a
comparable position for themselves, having started with nothing. From
Bede's point of view much was amiss with monasteries also.
Monasteries were numerous, but were often treated as the hereditary
property of the founder's family, and the fiscal advantages of monastic
tenure seem to have led to the foundation of monasteries which were
such in name only. This is not to say that Bede disapproved of all that
went on in the church in his day, and we can see that if some elements
in it were worldly others were rigidly pious, as he was. The codes of
penances and secular laws of the period indicate a desire (there is no
means of telling how far it was fulfilled) to make the Christian English
observe the letter of a strict law. For example, 'If a freeman works on
Sunday without his lord's command he is to lose his freedom.' Piety is
not inconsistent with wealth, nor indeed are strict laws inconsistent
with avarice, but it is likely that there were many like Bede who were
both pious and unworldly. The English church was not only
prosperous but diverse, containing Christians at very different levels of
sophistication and, one may guess, sophisticated Christians whose
views varied widely. It was faced with the opportunities and problems
which occur when an ertswhile missionary church becomes part of
society and changes its nature as it changes that of society.
If The Ecclesiastical History is read in the light of Bede's views on the
church in his own day, it can be seen to be (among other things) an
implicit commentary on it. In setting good examples from the past,
Bede is especially concerned with bishops. Monks and monasteries are
not neglected, but his long accounts are nearly all of bishops, and he has
surprisingly little to say even of his own monastery. Bede's first
account of a model bishop is that of Augustine in I, xxvi. Augustine is
said to have lived in accordance with the mode of the Primitive Church
in devotion, in poverty, in steadfastness, in practising what he
preached. Emphasis on the same virtues recurs in Bede's accounts of
later bishops such as Aidan, Chad, and Cuthbert. He lays particular
stress on poverty. Pope Gregory told Augustine that he ought to live
with his followers with all things in common as in the Primitive
Church, and Bede later adopts this statement in describing Hilda. He
admired a humble way of life, and points out that the bishops of the
Celtic church preferred to walk rather than to ride - though Theodore
made Chad ride in order to get about his diocese. The virtues of such
men were in obvious contrast to the grasping bishops of his own day,
to whose jolly parties he refers in The Letter to Egbert. Aidan's way of
life was, he says, very different from the idleness of our days. In
describing Cuthbert's reception when he went about preaching, he says
that in those days people flocked to the preacher. The implication is that
in his own day they did not.
Bede treats different bishops in different ways. For Aidan we have
some account of the events of his life, a eulogy of the way in which he
lived it, and a collection of miracles, for John of Hexham, miracles and
almost nothing else; for Theodore a long account of his deeds, nothing of
his way of life, and no miracles at all. It is possible to explain these
striking differences as the reflection of the differences between Bede's
sources and of Bede's difference to his sources. Bede was not concerned,
one may think, to give a methodical account of the lives of each of these
men, but simply inserted such useful and edifying material as he could
find. Such an explanation is valid but not complete. Bede compiled
where a modern historian would have edited, but he edited where a
modern historian would have compiled.
The extent to which Bede was capable of editing his material in such a
way as to exclude the unedifying may be seen from his treatment to
Wilfrid. Most of what Bede says in The Ecclesiastical History is beyond
criticism insofar as we have no other source describing the same events.
But a contemporary biography of Wilfrid, probably by his follower
Eddius, has survived, and it affords a rare opportunity of comparing
Bede's treatment of a subject with that of another man, less able but also
less discreet. An early supporter of Roman orthodoxy in Northumbria,
Wilfrid was an active founder of monasteries, a successful missionary
and, from 669, a bishop in Northumbria. His career was stormy. He
seems to have hoped to make himself supreme over the church in the
north, and so fell out with successive kings of Northumbria and
Bede II 41
archbishops of Canterbury. In spite of several periods of exile and one of
imprisonment, he survived and prospered. Eddius was a very dutiful
biographer and shows the great bishop in all his glory: ascetic, brave, and
always right. His holiness was made evident by miracles. At the same
time it is made clear that Wilfrid was rich and determined to preserve his
riches, and his style of life seems to have been much like that of a great
secular lord. His deathbed as described by Eddius is extremely
instructive and very different from anything Bede tells us of a bishop. He
divided his property into several shares. One of these was to reward the
men who had followed him into exile and to whom he had not given
land; they sound very like a comitatus, a band of warriors who followed a
great lord. Part of his treasure was to go to his monastries to purchase the
favour of kings and bishops. Never in his history does Bede give us to
understand that a bishop might have a comitatus or a treasure, still less that
there were bishops whose favour might be bought. His Letter to Egbert
suggests that he knew perfectly well that such things happened, and two
passages in the Life oj St Cuthbert associate being made a bishop with
becoming wealthy. But he did not regard such matters as a subject for
history. It is nearly certain that Bede had Eddius's Life of Wilfrid, at least
by the time he came to write V, xix; but he uses Eddius with discretion,
and his survey of Wilfrid's career is very carefully edited. Nothing is said
of Wilfrid's wealth and style of life. His quarrels are treated very
discreetly; his imprisonment is not mentioned; his conflicts with other
bishops are barely touched upon; a whole council is omitted. In
describing such an edifying episode as the conversion of Sussex, Bede
attributes near-miraculous powers to Wilfrid, but he relates none of the
miracles which Eddius describes to show how God fought on Wilfrid's
side in his struggle for episcopal power.
In the light of Bede's treatment of Wilfrid one begins to wonder
about his account of Archbishop Theodore. He gives just a hint that he
may not have approved of all Theodore's doings when he praises a
bishop whom Theodore deposed (IV, vi). Although he usually refers to
Theodore as 'of blessed memory', he has nothing to say of his personal
holiness or of his way of life. No miracles are attributed to him. It is
slightly surprising that Bede, who is willing to supply fifty-four lines of
verse on an abbess about whom he has already had a good deal to say
(IV, xx), should abbreviate the epitaph of so important a man as
Theodore (V, viii). Can it be that he did not think well of all that
Theodore did, and did the middle of the epitaph describe something of
which he disapproved? The problem is typical of those which arise when
Bede's history is analysed. Three kinds of answer are possible. First, it
may be that the contrast between his treatment of Theodore and that of
some other bishops simply reflects differences between his sources. In
particular, the absence of miracles seems characteristic of Bede's
Canterbury sources. He describes very few miracles performed by the
archbishops or by other members of the Roman church in Kent.
Second, it may be that the selection of material for his book was partly
determined by incidental reasons of space, time, or chance. Either of
these explanations could account for the nature of his treatment of
Theodore. But they do not exclude the third, which is that he may have
edited his sources, suppressing or abbreviating that which he found
unedifying.
For all the superficial simplicity of The Ecclesiastical History it is not a
simple book. Bede was a very intelligent, learned, and devout man,
dealing with subjects which were very difficult (difficult not only
because of deficiency of information, but because of the religious
problems involved) and according to strongly held principles which
were not always quite consistent with one another. The nature of his
difficulties and some of the explanation of his power to move may be
seen in his treatment of miracles. The Ecclesiastical History is full of
miracles and visions. Their number may surprise the modern reader,
but it is not hard to explain. They may be considered as the equivalent
of Eusebius's account of the passions of martyrs. Bede sometimes tells
us why he puts a particular story in; it will, he says, be useful (meaning
spiritually useful) to his readers. A large part of what sources he had
consisted of miracle stories. For all these reasons much of The
Ecclesiastical History is hagiographical in style, content, and method.
Wonder follows wonder. Now recent and contemporary (as opposed
to biblical) miracles had for long raised severe difficulties for the
thinking Christian. In sophisticated milieux there was the problem of
incredulity. On the other side there was the danger (perhaps a worse
one) of an endless hunger for the miraculous. Pope Gregory the Great
warned more than once (for example, in the letter copied out in I, xxi)
that not all saints performed miracles, that miracles could be performed
by the wicked, that virtues were more important than wonders. Bede
repeats his warnings. Yet both Gregory and Bede retail endless
miracles. 'They seem to speak with two voices'. The difficulty may
have been greater for Bede than it was for Gregory, for Bede lived
among barbarian Christians and barbarised Christianity was largely a
matter of wonders.
Although Bede was a devout believer in miracles and an assiduous
collector of miracle stories, nevertheless he seems to have been selective
in what he included in The Ecclesiastical History. A high proportion of
the miracles he recorded there are the kind which are susceptible of a
natural explanation, particularly miracles of healing. Clearly, he was
not at all concerned to explain miracles away; but he does seem to have
preferred to avoid the more flabbergasting of them. There are several
analogues of scriptural miracles, but he never gives an instance of the
raising of the dead. His miracles are usually to demonstrate the
saintliness of a particular person or to reinforce some teaching. They are
Bede II 43
not random wonders. None has any political force; they do not
demonstrate how God defended the rights of a particular shrine or of a
particular man in a merely worldly struggle. In all these respects Bede is
in sharp contrast to most of those who described miracles.
Perhaps the most influential collection of miracle stories was Gregory
the Great's Dialogues. Bede knew this book and his style of narration
may well owe something to it. But the differences between Bede and
Gregory are more instructive than the similarities. Some of Gregory's
miracles are brutal. For example, he tells of an unfortunate man who
was struck dead because his playing on the cymbals disturbed a bishop
at prayer. Others are trumpery, as in the case of Bishop Boniface's
clearing his garden, by Divine aid, of caterpillars: 'I adjure you in the
name of Our Lord Christ, depart and stop eating those vegetables.' It is
fair to say that some of the animal miracles which Bede relates to
Cuthbert, but only of Cuthbert, are not very different from this tale,
though much more impressively told. But his miracles are never brutal
and rarely have the anecdotal triviality of many of Gregory's.
Bede's stories contrast even more strongly with those of Gregory of
Tours and other Prankish writers. A recurrent theme in Gregory of
Tours is the defence of the interests of Tours by God and St Martin.
There is nothing of this kind in Bede. In The Ecclesiastical History we
never meet such common incidents of life in the Dark Ages as the
alleged intervention of saints to protect their shrines and followers
against all comers, or violent struggles for the possession of the body of
a saint and the useful protection which was thought to come with it. It
could be that such things did not happen in England. But this is
unlikely and there is some evidence to the contrary. It is much more
likely that Bede belonged to a school of thought which was uneasy
about such aspects of Christianity among the barbarians and did not
think it appropriate to record them. He tended to omit just the kinds of
miracles and just the kinds of incident which most jar modern taste.
There are exceptions to this. In particular, his accounts of visions of the
next world indicate a harshness in his religion, which his preference for
describing the good rather than the base generally conceals.
Selective though Bede was, his deference to his sources sometimes
led him to introduce material which differs considerably in tone and
emphasis from anything he himself wrote. This is most obvious in a
comparison of the doctrinal disputes which he records in The
Ecclesiastical History. His description of the repulse of Pelagianism by
Germanus comes almost verbatim from Constantius's Life ofGermanus.
This is a fine example of a hagiographer's view of a theological dispute.
We are informed simply that the heretics filled the air with empty
words, whereupon the venerable prelates poured forth the flood of their
apostolical and evangelical discourse and made them confess their
errors to the cheers of the audience. Reasoning was of little significance
to Constantius. What mattered most was divine demonstrations that
Germanus was right: he could vanquish demons, work cures, and win
victories. The account in Bede of Augustine's meeting with the Britons
(II, ii) is in a similar vein. The power to cure is used as the touchstone of
orthodoxy - 'Let some sick man be brought'. This account probably
came straight to Bede from a source lost to us. Very different indeed is
Bede's account of the later progress of the Easter controversy, which is
almost certainly much more his own work, and where we do not find
miracles, devils, and cures, but solid and lucid arguments.
Thus Germanus, as described by Constantius, appears as a
thaumaturge, not much above the level of a witch doctor; while
Wilfrid, in his defence, as Bede describes it, of the Roman Easter, and
Ceolfrith, in his letter to Nechtan, appear as the intellectual heirs of the
Fathers and ultimately of the civilised learning of Greece and Rome.
Germanus was debating subjects which are still thought important and
probably always will be: the problems of sin and grace. Constantius's
account disregards the issues and debases the subject. The protagonists
of the Roman Easter were fighting for a cause which not even Rome
now cares about. Bede's account of the case is so skilful that he exalts it
to a point where one can almost believe it matters. Bede could, had he
wished to do so, have put able arguments against Pelagianism into
Germanus's mouth. He chose simply to take over Constantius's
account: it was edifying, unexceptionable, and he was bound to give it
simple faith. The unevenness of The Ecclesiastical History is partly due to
Bede's devout acceptance of Christianity as it was expressed at different
levels of sophistication.
If The Ecclesiastical History is much affected by the nature of Bede's
sources it should be possible to see him more by himself in his account
of the abbots of his own monastery, The Lives of the Abbots. This did
not belong, as did most of his other works, to a more or less established
genre, though another monk of Bede's monastery had written a Life of
Ceolfrith which Bede used and which much resembles his own work in
style and in content. It is the style of The Lives of the Abbots which first
impresses the reader. Bede's extreme skill in emotive description can
nowhere be better seen than in his accounts of the deaths of Benedict
and Eosterwine, and of the departure of Ceolfrith. In using the work of
his anonymous predecessor, he sometimes made an addition to
heighten the pathos as, for example, when in saying that some of
Ceolfrith's followers stayed beside his tomb at Langres, he adds that
they were among a people not even whose language they knew. The
book is in strong contrast with the Life of St Cuthbert in including
numerous facts and no miracles. Bede supplies a remarkable amount of
information about the property and buildings of the abbey, and much
chronological detail. There are many edifying stories, but not a single
miracle. What little there is of the miraculous in the anonymous life of
Bede II 45
Coelfrith is excluded. Bede does not say, as the Anonymous does, that
his body remained uncorrupted and a light shone above it, and that
miracles were reported at his tomb.
It may be that Bede did not regard this as the kind of book in which
miracles were to be recorded. But no abbot or monk of
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow is credited with miraculous powers in The
Ecclesiastical History either; perhaps the religous atmosphere there was
different from that at Lindisfarne or at Barking. As in The Ecclesiastical
History Bede's purpose in The Lives of the Abbots is continuously
didactic: only here he is showing the way to monks and abbots rather
than to bishops and kings. Humbleness and simplicity are again
emphasised. He is very concerned that it should be understood that the
abbacy was not to descend by hereditary succession (as was common in
other abbeys). There is just enough evidence to suggest that, for all the
lavish detail of The Lives of the Abbots, it is edited to give the right
impression. The anonymous life of Ceolfrith says that he once left
Jarrow 'because of the jealousies and most violent attacks of certain
nobles, who could not endure his regular discipline'. Bede says nothing
of this, but it is to be observed that in his account of Eosterwine he is
careful to emphasise that he did not expect unusual privileges because
he was noble. The Lives of the Abbots is unlike The Ecclesiastical History in
its consistency in style and content and in its exclusion of the
miraculous. It is very like it insofar as its purpose is to teach lessons and
to do so by dwelling upon the good and saying nothing of the bad.
Any judgment on Bede as an historian must be tempered. We do not
know enough about his sources to be able to say even how much of The
Ecclesiastical History is his in the sense of being more than a selection of
stories incorporated much as they came to him. It is impossible to be
certain how far there is an element of randomness in its composition.
Above all, there are too few other authorities with which to compare
him. There is no means of telling whether most of what he says about
English history is right or wrong. Our relative ignorance of what the
church was like in his own day makes it difficult to assess his attitude
and purposes.
Despite the reservations which such difficulties impose, Bede can be
seen to be a great historian. Modern historians often praise him because
he seems much as they themselves are. Interested in his work mainly as
a source, they value those qualities which are thought to vouch for his
reliability. Such praise is justified only in part. Bede's greatness comes
not only from qualities which would have made him a good historian
by modern professional standards, but also from others which would
have made him an extremely bad one. Certainly his extensive collection
of material and his care for documents and dates make him more
reliable than most Dark Age historians. Few, if any, brought such
ability and expertise to their task. But to ability and expertise was added
high moral purpose and the task Bede set himself was not to describe
the history of the English church just as it had happened. It was to
describe it in such a way as to illustrate and support the principles of
faith and conduct in which he believed. As a consequence The
Ecclesiastical History is in part an ably constructed record and in part a
history idealised to the point of becoming visionary.
Bede was the first important Christian historian to have been a
monk. Most of his predecessors had been great men in the secular
church. Bede considered events with more detachment or with a
different commitment than theirs. His demand for humbleness and
poverty among the clergy stands in a tradition which, although always
present in the church, had gained new strength with the advent of
monasticism from the fourth century. Eusebius had not placed so
strong an emphasis on the simple way of life of model bishops. A
bishop himself, and basking in the favour of the Emperor Constantine,
he had not, perhaps, seen the need so clearly. Bede's views on
episcopacy are much more like those of the monk-bishop St Martin of
Tours, who, ascetic, devoted, and disheveled, was until his death in 397
an example and something of a threat to the prelates of Gaul. Bede's
views on the proper conduct of the clergy made him opposed to much
that went on around him. He stood for episcopal poverty and elected
abbots at a time when at least some bishops were rich and powerful and
some, perhaps many, abbots had inherited their offices. Soaked in the
learning of the Fathers, who were very civilised, he lived among
barbarian Christians whose beliefs and practices were often crude. Like
Gregory the Great, he was both a devout believer in the frequent
manifestation of miracles and mistrusted the consquences of that belief
in others.
His history of his own church reflects the complications of his
position. Characteristically, he looked a long way back for his model.
Just as he had written a chronicle when that genre had been disused for
nearly a century, so he wrote a history, not in the manner of his more
immediate predecessors, but in that of Eusebius. He was too judicious
to impose a simple Providential scheme as Orosius had done, and too
reserved and discreet to make his work like that of Gregory of Tours,
largely an account of recent events with moralising commentary. He
chose to infuse his record with his beliefs not in these obvious ways, but
by emphasis and selection. He dwelt upon the good and passed lightly
over the bad, in particular omitting almost everything that might be to
the discredit of the church. Bede's views on the miracles, their
importance and their dangers, appear by his insertion of numerous
miracle stories and also, I think it fair to assume, by his omission of
others of kinds popular with other believers and writers, but distasteful
to him. His work is so full of awareness of God that it gives a very
strange picture of Man. Bede seems to lack almost all interest in human
Bede II 47
character except in so far as it could be represented in religious
stereotypes. He had no taste for idiosyncracy. While The Ecclesiastical
History is full of very memorable incidents, there is hardly a character in
it who appears in any degree individual. Bede's principles and his caution
led him to sheer away from his own times and from the complications
and ambiguities of men and events as they really were and are.
These qualities are not those of a good historian in the modern sense.
His history reflects not so much the nature of the past he described as
his own nature. The impression which his work gives of calm,
moderation, and judiciousness is justified. But, while these virtues led
him to write history which was more accurate and technically more
sophisticated than that of lesser men, they also made it less real and less
revealing than theirs. Bede's power of mind, his narrative skill and, one
might almost say, his good taste are employed to transmute the past
and to carry the reader into a world which was partly of his own
creation. Bede's greatness derives partly from the competence and
usefulness of his history as record. Even more impressive is the
learning, power of mind, and skill with which he made his account of
the past a testament to his beliefs and a lesson to his church.
Additional Bibliographical Note
The study of Bede has made considerable progress since the publication of these papers
in 1966 and 1968. A new edition of the text has been published by B. Colgrave and
R. A. B. Mynors, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969).
Plummer's text was already a very good one but Mynors's history of the manuscript
history is important. The most significant emendation of the accepted text is that of J. O.
Prestwich, 'King Aethelhere and the Battle of the Winwaed', English Historical Review
Ixxxiii (1968), pp. 89-95. Admirable guides to Bede's world have been provided by the
late Peter Hunter Blair and by Henry Mayr-Harting; for these see chapters 3 and 4 below.
Two important collections of essays on Bede are: Famulus Christi. Essays in
Commemoration of the Thirteenth Century of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, edited by Gerald
Bonner (1976) and Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, edited by R. T. Farrell (British
Archaeological Reports, 46, Oxford, 1978). Among the most significant of fairly
numerous articles are the following: J. N. Stevens, 'Bede's Ecclesiastical History',
History, Ixxii (1977), pp. 1-14 (which contains some criticism of what is written above);
Roger Ray, 'Bede's Vera Lex Historica', Speculum Iv (1980), pp. 1-21; H. E.J. Cowdrey,
'Bede and the "English People"', Journal of Religious History xi (1981), pp. 501-23; A. A.
M. Duncan, 'Bede, lona and the Picts', in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays
Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill
(Oxford, 1981), pp. 1-42; G. Tugene, 'L'histoire "ecclesiastique" du peuple Anglais:
reflexions sur le particularisme et 1'universalisme chez Bede', Recherches Augustiniennes,
xvii (1982, pp, 129-72; Jan Davidse, 'The Sense of History in the Works of the Venerable
Bede', Studi Medievali, 3rd ser. xxiii (1982), pp. 647-95; and the following contributions
to Ideal and Reality in Prankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to]. M. Wallace-
Hadrill, ed. Patrick Wormald and others (Oxford, 1983); Judith McClure, 'Bede's Old
Testament Kings' (pp. 76-98); Patrick Wormald, 'Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins
o(theGensAnglorum(pp. 99-129); Alan Thacker, 'Bede's Ideal of Reform' (pp. 130-53).
A number of important studies on Bede and on the insular churches in the seventh and
eighth centuries appear in Peritia, iii (1984): J. N. Hillgarth, 'Ireland and Spain in the
Seventh Century' (pp. 1-16); D. O'Croinin, 'Rath Melsigi, Willibrord and the earliest
Echternach Manuscripts' (pp. 17-49); J.-M. Picard 'Bede, Adomnan and the Writing of
History' (pp. 50-70); J. McClure, 'Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid' (pp. 71-84); E. James,
'Bede and the Tonsure Question' (pp. 85-98); M. Richter, 'Bede's Angli: Angles or
English?' (pp. 99-114); P. Ni Chatham, 'Bede's Ecclesiastical History in Irish' (pp. 115-
30). The study of chronological matters has been much advanced by K. Harrison, The
Framework of Anglo-Saxon History to A.D. 900, (Cambridge, 1976); and Susan Wood,
'Bede's Northumbrian Dates Again', English Historical Review, xcviii (1983, pp. 280-96,
settles disputes about Bede's dates which needed settling. D. P. Kirby has made
important contributions, in particular, 'King Ceolwulf of Northumbria and the Historia
Ecdesiastica', Studia Celtica, xiv/xv (1979-80), pp. 168-73 and 'Bede, Eddius Stephanus
and the Life of Wilfrid', English Historical Review xcviii (1983), pp. 101-14. See also G.
Musca, // Venerabile Beda storico dell'Alto Medioevo (Bari, 1973). On particular points
above it should be noted that weighty arguments now suggest that Beowulf, as we have it,
cannot be so probably allocated to the eighth century as is suggested above (p. 13) see
The Dating of Beowulf, ed. Colin Chase (Toronto, 1981).
3
The First Century of Christianity in England
The achievements of the Church in England by the time of Bede (d. 735)
are often, and justly, marvelled at. It is a matter for surprise that until last
year no scholar had written a book about Bede and his environment. Mr
Hunter Blair's recent book has filled that gap, providing a learned and
judicious assessment of most aspects of Bede's life and work, apart from
his theology.1 It depends to a very great extent on Bede's own writings.
This has to be so, for Bede's works, above all the Historia Ecdesiastica, are
far and away our best source. But it may be that necessary dependence on
Bede for information and justifiable respect for Bede's virtues have led to
a tendency among some historians to see the first century of Christianity
in England too much as Bede saw it, or rather, as he thought it best that
readers of the Ecclesiastical History should see it. The merits of Bede's
work as a historian are beyond question. He had, nevertheless, to work
under great limitations and his purposes differed from those of modern
historians. On some subjects he lacked information which, we may
fairly assume, he would have liked to include. On others he fails to
provide information which he had, but did not feel to be appropriate to
the genre in which he was writing. He was concerned to edify, and
thought it his duty to say much of the good and little of the bad. Bede did
not simply present a straight narrative of events as he knew them, he
selected, omitted, and emphasised for reasons some of which can be
known, others only guessed at. To say this is, of course, simply to say
that he was a historian writing in his own terms for his own world.
Bede's purposes in writing his history led him to under-emphasise, for
different reasons, two important aspects of the English Church as it was
in his own lifetime. One is the power and wealth of the Church; the other
the number of its monasteries. Of some kinds of ecclesiastical power
Bede much approved, and he tells us of them, indicating the remarkable
extent to which Theodore was able to unite the English Church and to
establish some degree of independence of the power of the kings. An
aspect of episcopal power which Bede has much less to say about is the
wealth of at least some bishops. He was fully aware of the connection
between episcopacy and money; but disliked it and so says little of it. His
reticence has been imitated by most later historians. Bede seems to have
regarded avarice as high among the besetting temptations and sins of
1
P. Hunter Blair, The World of Bede (1970).
49
bishops. In his letter to Egbert he says that although there were remote
villages which had not so much as seen a bishop for years nevertheless
not a single one of these places was immune from rendering tributa to its
neglectful pastor.2 Tributum is referred to in Theodore's Penitential where
it is indicated that the term was a general one and included tithe and it is
stated that it is to be levied according to the custom of the province and is
not to be such as to burden the poor, which inclines one to think it was
burdening the poor. It is not possible to be positive that any particular
clause in the Penitential refers to English conditions. The same objection
does not apply to clause 61 of Ine's laws:
Church-scot is to be paid from the haulm and the hearth where one resides at
midwinter.4
Not only had the Church in England established something like a right
to tax, but it seems to have been concerned to get its share of what may
have been the most important part of any successful king's income: the
spoils of war. The Penitential of Theodore says that a third part of the
pecunia taken from a conquered king shall be given to the Church or the
poor.5 Again, one cannot be quite certain that this refers to England.
But probably it does and a famous letter from archbishop Berhtwold to
the bishop of Sherborne attempting to regain a noble Kentish girl who
was being held in captivity by the abbot of Glastonbury would fit easily
into a context in which ecclesiastics were indeed getting their share of
the booty.6 The worldly greatness of a successful bishop is made
sufficiently plain by Eddius. His story of Wilfrid's division of his
treasure not long before he died is a revealing one. He had it brought
before him at Ripon, 'gold and silver with precious stones' and had it
divided into four parts. Of these one went to his abbots at Ripon and
Hexham 'so that they might secure the friendship of kings and of
bishops with gifts.' Another was to go to those followers who had
served him long in exile and to whom he had not given land.7 Here
Wilfrid appears very much like a great secular lord with his treasure and
his comitatus. The reference to buying the favour of bishops is an
indication of their power and of how some of them used it. Wini had
found it worth his while to buy the see of London as early as c 666.
Small wonder that when Bede described Cuthbert's attitude towards
2
Opera Historica, ed. C. Plummer, (2. vols., 1896), i, 410.
3
A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils . . . relating to Great Britain and Ireland (3
vols., 1869-78), iii, 203; cf. G. Constable, Monastic Tithes (1964), 25n.
4
Eng. Hist. Docs, i (ed. D. Whitelock, 2nd ed. 1979), 406. For the literature on
church-scot see F. Barlow, The English Church 1000-1066, 160-2.
5
Haddan and Stubbs, iii, 182.
6
Eng. Hist. Docs., i (as at n. 4 above), no. 166.
7
The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus ed. B. Colgrave (1927), 136.
8
Bede, Op. Hist., i, 141.
The First Century of Christianity in England 51
the prospect of a bishopric he says that it was the perils of the love of
money of which the saint was most afraid.9
In the Ecclesiastical History Bede does not draw episcopal wealth to the
attention of his readers. He was very well aware of, and alarmed by it.
He chose to avoid drawing attention to it but to lay great stress on the
good example set by poor bishops in the past.
No such concern to avoid scandal and to emphasise the edifying can
account for Bede's failure to give much weight to another important
aspect of the English Church in his day, the very large number of
monasteries (though he did mistrust some monasteries or pseudo-
monasteries). He indicates that monasteries became numerous during
the second half of the seventh century, describes the foundation of
some, and mentions a considerable number of others. But monasteries
are not his main concern; that is with bishops, the foundation of sees
and the conversion of kingdoms, and with certain kinds of miracle
story. In so far as he had a model it was that of Eusebius, who could
have nothing to say about monasteries. It is clearly not part of Bede's
design to record the foundation of monasteries, except in special cases
or incidentally. The number of passing references to monasteries in his
text indicates that they were numerous; 10 other sources suggest that
they were very numerous. Many English monasteries of Bede's day are
known only from a stray reference or so. For example, we should not
know that there was a monastery of some note at Nursling, were it not
mentioned in Willibald's life of Boniface.11 The only incontrovertible
early reference to the house at Much Wenlock comes from a letter of
Boniface's.12 The existence of the double monastery at Wimborne is
known only from Rudolph of Fulda's life of Leofgyth. 13 There are
many other such cases. When many monasteries are known only from
isolated references in scanty sources it is a fair deduction that there were
many others to which our sources do not refer at all. There must have
been scores of monasteries by the time Bede died; possibly there were
hundreds. It is an important possibility that Bede's not being concerned
to record the foundation of monasteries except in special circumstances
may give an inadequate impression of the importance of Irish
foundations other than those made directly or indirectly from lona. He
mentions only two such: Fursey's in East Anglia 14 and Dicuill's at
Bosham. There is a fairly strong a priori case for supposing there to
9
Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, ed. B. Colgrave (1940), 184, cf. 236.
10
D. P. Kirby, 'Bede's Native Sources', Bull. John Rylands Library, xlviii (1965-6),
356.
11
Vitae Sancti Bonifatii Archiepiscopi Moguntini, W. Levison (M.G.H. Script. Rer.
Germ, in usum Schol. 1905), 9.
12
Ed. M. Tangl, 5. Bonifatii et Lullii Epistolae (M.G.H. Epistolae Selectae i, 1916) 8.
13
Ed. G. Waitz (M.G.H. Scriptores, XV, 1887), 123.
14
Op. Hist., i, 163f.
15
Ibid., i, 231.
have been other such houses unmentioned by Bede, granted that so
many Irishmen went abroad as missionaries and hermits in this period.
It is strengthened by there certainly having been one Irish monastery
which he does not mention as such. This is Malmesbury, founded by
Maidubh, probably by about the middle of the seventh century,
possibly before 640.16 To judge from the rank and attainments of its
most eminent son, Aldhelm, it was a house of some note and some
learning. It is hard to believe that it did not play a part in the conversion
of Wessex; and Bede's saying nothing of it in that context is a warning
that there may have been important elements in the conversion of
England as a whole of which he does not tell. Indeed we have only to
reflect upon how little he tells us of his own monastery. All the detailed
information he gives us about it comes from his Lives of the Abbots; it is
from there alone that we can surmise the relative magnificence of the
monastic buildings of Jarrow.
Of course 'monastery' at this period is a comprehensive term,
denoting institutions of rather various kinds. Some no doubt were
small and by later standards anomalous institutions. Others were
establishments of some considerable grandeur. Monkwearmouth/
Jarrow was not only a very numerous community, some six hundred
strong, but was also very well housed. Bede describes Benedict
Biscop's building activities; and the important excavations which Miss
Cramp has been carrying out demonstrate that the monks of these
monasteries were indeed housed more Romanorum, in large regularly
built buildings, plastered inside and out, the inside walls being painted,
the floors made up of an imitation of opus signinum, and the windows
filled with clear and coloured glass.1 Bede was living in physical
surroundings very different indeed from the rustic simplicity of Aidan's
accommodation a couple of generations earlier. Other monasteries had
noble buildings; Wilfrid's foundations of Ripon and Hexham are
obvious examples. More impressive still is the great church at
Brixworth, belonging to a monastery which, if we had only written
sources to go by, we should not think likely to have been of more than
minor importance. There were other monasteries of which our sources
tell us little which had buildings of some splendour. Aldhelm's poem
on the abbess Bugge's church (possibly at Withington, Gloucs.) refers
to its glass windows. He also lays some stress on the beauty of a golden
chalice inlaid with gems which adorned this monastery and on its other
treasures.18 This is a reminder that the Church of his day was rich not
16
A. Watkin in VCH Wilts., iii (1956), 210-3.
17
R. Cramp, Early Northumbrian Sculpture (1965), 3; Medieval Archaeology, vi-vii,
315; viii, 232.
18
Ed. R. Ehwald (M.G.H. Auct. Antiquiss., xv, 1919), 17, 18. I owe this reference
to the kindness of Dr. Henry Mayr-Harting. Cf. M. Bateson, 'The Origin and Early
History of Double Monasteries', Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., new ser., xiii (1899), 178.
only in buildings but in gold and silver. Great ecclesiastics like great
laymen expected to be surrounded by rich and splendid objects.
Ethelbert II's idea of a present to send to Boniface was a silver cup lined
with gold and weighing three and a half pounds.19 If the gold and
garnet pectoral cross and the silver-covered travelling altar found in
Cuthbert's tomb were actually his, as it seems reasonable to suppose,
then even that ascetic saint had magnificent possessions. There is
evidence to suggest that rich objects were manufactured in English
monasteries; for example Miss Cramp's discovery of an unused stick of
millefiori enamel at Jarrow.21 There was much wealth and much
grandeur in the English Church in Bede's day. He is not concerned to
draw such things to the attention of readers of the Ecclesiastical History.
It is probable that the relationships between England and Gaul were
of much more importance in determining the progress of the Church in
England in the seventh century than emerges directly from Bede's text.
Our evidence on the closeness of those relationships before 597 is
inconclusive.22 The marriage of Ethelbert of Kent to the daughter of the
Merovingian king Charibert (before 590) may have been part of a more
extensive connection. Certainly the Prankish kings Theudebert (534-
48) and Chilperic (561-84) at least liked to be thought to have had
overlordship beyond the Channel and may have had it.23 Although a
recent argument that the Prankish objects found in southern England
indicate that the fifth century invasions south of the Thames were
largely Prankish has not met with general support the archaeological
evidence does suggest some Prankish settlement in Kent.24 Bede says
that among the peoples from whom the Anglo-Saxons were derived
were the Boructuari; this people is generally counted as Prankish. 25 All
told there is a fair case for supposing there to have been Franks in
England. Furthermore it is more or less certain that there were
considerable Saxon settlements in north Gaul: round Boulogne (by the
19
Ed. M. Tangl, 230.
20
Ed. C. F. Battiscombe, The Relics of St. Cuthbert (1956).
21
R. L. S. Bruce Mitford, 'The Reception by the Anglo-Saxons of Mediterranean
Art', Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano sull'Alto Medioevo, xiv (1967), 818.
22
Dr. J. M. Wallace Hadrill, from whom one hesitates to differ, in 'Rome and the
English Church: some Questions of Transmission', Settimane . . ., vii (1960), 526-8,
regards it as being under a misapprehension to hold that Prankish-Kentish contacts had
been established on a wide front before 597, but it is hard to see how the evidence can
justify so firm a conclusion.
23
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (2nd edn., 1947), 4, 7, 14; A. R. Burn,
Trocopius and the Isle of Ghosts', Eng. Hist. Rev., Ixx (1955), 258-61.
24
V. Evison, The Fifth Century Invasions South of the Thames (1965); C. F. C. Hawkes
in Dark Age Britain, ed. D. B. Harden (1956), 91-111.
25
Op. Hist., i, 296. This passage is generally regarded (as Mr. Hunter Blair regards
it, World of Bede, 23-4) as giving a list of peoples living in Germany. But the sense of the
Latin is that these are the peoples from whom the Anglo-Saxons living in Britain were
derived.
shortest crossing from Kent); in the neighbourhood of Bayeux, where a
body of Saxons was recognised as a distinct entity in the sixth century;
and near the mouth of the Loire. 6 In some ways Franks and Saxons
probably merged into a kind of continuum. Consider the lands which
Augustine would have passed through on his way to England; we do
not known his exact route but it probably ran up the Rhone valley to
Autun and then to Quentovic for the crossing. He would have gone
through, first, lands which were still in important ways part of the
Roman world, where the descendants of the senatorial aristocracy
survived and provided the bishops and where some sort of urban life
was maintained; and then lands where the institutional Church survived
but where Roman survival was less marked and Prankish settlement
thicker; and then lands still within the sphere of influence of the
Merovingian kings but where the population was not only largely
German but pagan, and where bishoprics had not survived; and then a
part of that area in which the German inhabitants included Anglo-
Saxons; and finally, across the Channel to Kent where there may have
been Prankish settlers and which some Prankish kings at least chose to
regard as under their power. The Channel was not necessarily the most
important of the boundaries he crossed; so far as religion and culture
went the crucial divide was further south.
Deficiency of information leaves a wide area for doubt in assessing
the closeness of the relationship between the Franks and the Saxons. For
example insufficient is known of the Prankish language in this period
for us to tell whether it would have been fairly intelligible to Saxons.
Bede's reference to Augustine's use of Prankish interpretes suggests that
it could have been.27 Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon society in the
period of conversion is not sufficient to enable us to estimate how
similar Saxon kings were to Prankish kings. A curious parallel between
a story of Bede's and a text probably describing the Merovingian court
suggests more similarity than one might guess. The story is one of
Oswald. He was, Bede says, sitting down to dinner one Easter Day.
Before him was set a silver dish, laden with good things. Then in came
his minister, whose task it was to relieve the poor, and said that many
poor men were asking for alms from the king. Oswald not only gave
them his food but ordered the silver dish to be broken up and given to
26
For the literature on these settlements see W. Levison, England and the Continent in
the Eighth Century (1947), 4; D. A. White, Litus Saxonicum (1961), 56-72 and note. It is
of some interest that the first Saxons known to have become Christians anywhere were
living in the diocese of Nantes, c. 560 (Levison, England and the Continent, 4 and n.) and
that there is archaeological evidence to suggest direct contact between this area and
Kent at the time, most recently H. Vierck in K. Haucke, Goldbrakteaten aus Sievern
(1970), 390-3 (I owe this reference to Mrs. S. C. Hawkes.)
7
Op. Hist, i, 45. Interpretes may possibly mean no more than 'emissaries' but could
indicate Franks who knew the language spoken in Kent.
28
them in little pieces, minutatim. The Merovingian text describes
officials called consules whose function it is to make the king's gifts. The
consul, it says, sprinkles little pieces of silver on the ground which the
poor scramble for as best they can, while the happy king looks on,
smiling.29 It may be that the coincidence is a chance one; but the
appearance in both sources of an officer whose function it is to make
gifts and of the business of scattering little pieces of silver to the poor
does not seem more likely than not to be by more than chance and does
something to justify entertaining the supposition that the
Northumbrian court was not unlike that of a Merovingian king. There
are further indications in the early seventh century of fairly close
relationships between England and Gaul. After Edwin of
Northumbria's death his son and grandson were sent to Gaul to be
brought up by their relation Dagobert.30 Sigbert of East Anglia went
into exile in Gaul. Ethelbert's son Eadbald, himself half-Frankish,
seems to have married a Prankish princess.31 Men described as Saxons
were sometimes prominent in Gaul; though here there is the difficulty
that we cannot tell whether, for example, the Saxon dux who went with
Dagobert's army to Gascony in 635 or the Saxon servant of St. Eloi
were English or Continental Saxons.32
The secular connections between England and Gaul were reinforced
by and help to explain the relationships between the English and Gallic
Churches. Bede has quite a lot to tell us about these relationships. Three
bishops of English sees came from Gaul: Felix (of East Anglia c 630—
?647) and Agilbert and his nephew Leutherius (both of Wessex 650-660
and 670-676).33 Wini, bishop of Wessex (662-666) and later of London
(666-666 x 675) was consecrated in Gaul.34 Wilfrid spent three years in
the service of Archbishop Annemundus of Lyons (655—8) and had other
close relationships with Gaul.35 The connection with Lyons may have
been of particular significance in view of its importance as a centre of
learning in the period. Berhtwald, archbishop of Canterbury, was
consecrated there in 693.36 Englishmen going to Italy usually went via
the Rhone valley and Benedict Biscop is unlikely to have been the only
Englishman to have taken the opportunity to acquire books there. In
28
Op. Hist, i, 138.
29
J. M. Wallace Hadrill, The Long Haired Kings (1962), 217-8. Various explanations
of the coincidence other than that mentioned above are, of course, possible; e.g. that
Bede's story derives in outline from some lost piece of Continental hagiography.
30
Bede, Op. Hist, i, 126.
31
Ibid., i, 116; F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (2nd edn., 1947), 60.
32
Ed. J. M. Wallace Hadrill, Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar (1960), 65; W.
Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, 9 and n.
33
Bede, Op. Hist i, 116, 140, 141.
34
Ibid., i, 140.
35
Eddius, Life of Wilfrid, ed. Colgrave, caps, vi, xii, xxviii.
36
the time of Earconberht, king of Kent (640-64) there were, according
to a famous and very important passage in Bede's Ecclesiastical History,
few monasteries in England and those seeking the monastic life went to
houses in Gaul, especially to Chelles, Faremoutier-en-Brie and Andelys.
Among those who went to these monasteries were Earcongota
(daughter of Earconberht of Kent), Saethyrth and Aethelburh (daughter
and step-daughter of Anna of East Anglia), who went to Faremoutier,
the last two becoming abbesses, and Hereswith, who went to Chelles,
where her sister Hilda, later abbess of Whitby, at one time intended to
follow her.37
It is possible to add details from other sources to what Bede tells us of
the relations between the Church in England and the Church in Gaul.
The weight to be attached to some of these is uncertain; they do no
more than raise possibilities. For example, we know that Justus, bishop
of Rochester, and Peter, abbot of St Peter's Canterbury, attended the
great council at Paris in 614.38 Many explanations of their presence are
possible, from chance to their having been summoned as an indication
of Clothar II's having some kind of overlordship in Kent. But some of
the additional information which we have, put together with what
Bede tells us is of more definite import. It draws our attention to the
great importance in relation to the history of the Church in England of
the monastic movement led by Columbanus and his disciples in Gaul.
Columbanus came to Gaul from Ireland in about 590. He first went
to Burgundy where he founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and
Annegray. He was expelled from Burgundy by Theuderich II in 610
and, shortly afterwards, went to Lombardy (612). He there founded the
great monastery of Bobbio before his death in 615. He seems to have
had a great impact on the Prankish courts and nobility. His
monasteries, above all Luxeuil, flourished and there were many
daughter houses. He, his disciples, and his monasteries seem to have
been largely responsible for the great changes which came over the
Church in northern Gaul in the seventh century. At the time of
Columbanus's arrival from Ireland the Church in much of northern and
eastern Gaul was in a poor way. Little had been done to convert the
pagans of Flanders and Picardy and paganism was probably still strong
in other northern areas. In the north and north east of Gaul the Gallo-
Roman ruling class had not survived to provide a means for the survival
of something of the Roman world as they had in the south and centre.
Monasteries were very few and in large areas there were, so far as we
know, none. What Pierre Riche calls the zone barbare, an area including
lands to the north of the lower Loire, much of Normandy, Picardy,
Flanders; and a good deal of north eastern Gaul was probably in many
37
P. Hunter Blair, World of Bede, 144-5.
38
Ed. F. Maassen (M.G.H. Legum Sectio III Concilia), i (1893), 192.
ways more like England than it was like southern Gaul/
In the seventh century all this changed very much. Missionaries such
as St Amand and St Ouen laboured in the north east and sees were
established or re-established there.40 A very large number of
monasteries were founded; the seventh century foundations of northern
Gaul provide a long list of famous names: Corbie, Chelles, Jumieges, St
Bertin, St Riquier, Fontenelle, to name only a few. It seems that among
the impulses which started these movements the influence of
Columbanus and his followers was the most important. It is true that
much of what happened can be known only through hagiographical
sources which can often only be checked by the crude process of
making assumptions about plausibility, which in the nature of the case,
we do not have adequate means of making. Nevertheless it seems
certain that many of the active bishops and monastery founders of the
period had come directly or indirectly under the influence of
Columbanus; and that most of the new monasteries were either
daughter houses of one of his foundations, above all Luxeuil, or were at
least founded by or under the influence of men and women associated
with him or with his immediate disciples. The churches of Ireland and
Gaul became involved in a fairly close relationship. A considerable
number of Irish came to Gaul and a considerable number of Franks
went to Ireland to study.
It is clear that many of the English relationships with Gaul were with
the, so to speak, Columbanian connection. This is certainly true of two
of the three monasteries to which Bede says the English went.
Faremoutier was a daughter house of Luxeuil itself.41 Jonas,
Columbanus's biographer, spent some time there c 644 and mentions a
nun there to add to the list of those of whom we otherwise know.42
Chelles was refounded by Balthildis, who was by origin an English
slave, had married Clovis II and was for some years after his death in 657
regent of Neustria. She brought the first nuns for it from Jouarre, which
had been founded by Adon, apparently under the influence of
Columbanus.43 Chelles, Jouarre and Faremoutier are fairly close
together in an area somewhat eastwards of Paris. Jouarre is less than 20
39
P. Riche, 'Les foyers de culture en Gaule Franque du VIe au IXe siecle', Settimane . . .,
xi, (1964), 298-301; P. Riche, Education et culture dans I'occident barbare (2nd edn., 1962),
220-26.
4
For summary accounts E. de Moreau, Histoire de VEglise en Belgique, i (2nd edn.,
1945) and G. Tessier, La conversion de Clovis et la christianisation des Francs',
Settimane . . ., xiv (1967), 171-89.
41
Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Geographic Ecclesiastiques, xvi, under Fare and
Faremoutiers.
42
Jonas, Vitae Columbani . . . Libri II ed. B. Krusch (M.G.H. Script. Rer. Merov.,
iv, 1902) 136-7.
43
W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, 9-10; Vita Bertilae, ed.
W. Levison, (.M.G.H. Script. Rer. Merov., vi, 1913) 104-5.
miles from Chelles and less than 15 from Faremoutier. The connection
between Chelles and Jouarre is an important one in relation to English
history. Agilbert, bishop of Wessex, seems to have been related to Adon,
founder of Jouarre, and to Telchildis its first abbess and the sarcophagus
in which he was buried in the crypt there is still to be seen.44 Agilbert's
having spent some time in Ireland strengthens the other evidence for his
connection with the heirs of Columbanus.45 Bede indicates the
importance of Agilbert and that of Chelles, but he does not indicate that
there was a connection between the two. The number of people who
came to England from Gaulish milieux under Irish influence was
probably considerable. The Vita of Bertila, first abbess of Chelles
(probably written a hundred years after the events it describes) says that
she sent holy men and women and books to England in response to
request from Saxon kings for aid in founding monasteries.46 The
Testament of Mildburg, a source which inspires reserve infused with
mistrust, says that the first abbess of Much Wenlock was called
Liobsynde, apparently a Prankish name; and she could have been one of
the women Bertila sent, perhaps.47 In any case the similarities between
the double monasteries of England and their Gaulish counterparts are
sufficiently great to make the Vita Bertilae's story plausible. Ronan, the
Irishman whom Bede mentions at the council of Whitby and who was in
Galliae vel Italiae partibus regulam ecdesiasticae veritatis edoctus sounds very
much as if he came from a Columbanian context; and Bede tells us there
were others in England who came de Galliis.48 St Riquier, according to
his Vita went to England for a period to preach and to redeem captives.49
St Amand is said to have wanted to go to preach in England.50 Both had
connections with the Irish. It is possible that there was Columbanian
influence on the conversion of East Anglia. Sigbert was converted in
Gaul c 630 at a time when the influence of Columbanus's followers was
44
For the early history of Jouarre, see J. Guerout in Y. Chaussy, et al., L'Abbaye
Royale Notre Dame de Jouarre (2 vols., 1961), i, 1-67. It was founded c. 635 by Adon, St.
Ouen's brother. But the family which provided the first abbesses and whose property
Jouarre probably became was that of Aden's step-mother. Agilbert was almost
certainly Telchildis's brother. He probably built the crypt in which he and the early
abbesses were buried and one tradition actually regarded him as the founder of the
monastery.
45
46
Hunter Blair, World of Bede, 145, 153.
47
H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (1961), 208-9.
48
Op. Hist, i, 181.
49
Ed. B. Krusch, Vita Richarii . . . (M.G.H. Script. Rer. Merov., vii, 1920) 448.
This is the first Vita, which, although in Krusch's judgment unreliable and not as nearly
contemporary with its subjects as it claims to be, cannot be of later than eighth century
date. If the story is true the saint would have gone to England some time before c 640.
50
Vita Amandi ed. B. Krusch, M.G.H. Script. Rer. Merov., v, 440, n. 3. Not a
contemporary observation.
51
strong and his bishop Felix came from Burgundy. Even in the case of
the mysterious Birinus, first bishop of Wessex, it is fair to say that a
plausible context for a missionary coming from northern Italy at this
period is a Columbanian one.52 There are scraps of evidence to show that
there were English members of monastic communities in Gaul other
than those which Bede mentions.53 The career of St Fursey provides
further evidence of the interconnections between England, northern
Gaul and Ireland in this period. Having come to East Anglia from
Ireland, apparently in the 630's and established a monastery there, he left,
probably early in the next decade, for Gaul. There he settled at Lagny on
the Marne (between Chelles and Jouarre). He seems to have been in the
favour of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace in Neustria, who founded the
monastery at Peronne to which Fursey's body (he died in 649 or 50) was
moved and which became the head of an important family of
monasteries which included Gertrude's at Nivelles. A generation later
Aldhelm was in direct communication with Peronne. 4 It is true that
some of the evidence for the relations between the Churches of England
and of Gaul in the early and middle seventh century is of a particularly
difficult kind. That a very late life of an English saint says he went to
Chelles, or an earlier but still not contemporary life of a Prankish saint
says he went to preach in England are susceptible of explanations other
than that we are being told the truth. But granted how much fairly solid
information our sources do provide, and granted that much of the
Gaulish (and Irish) influence would have found expression in the
foundation of monasteries and the arrival of missionaries who did not
become bishops (things which Bede's scheme did not enable him to
devote very much attention to) then it is reasonable to suppose that Gaul
and particularly the milieux in Gaul under Irish influence had a very great
deal to do with the progress of the Church in England.
It is likely that the development of the churches in England and in
northern Gaul in the seventh century took place upon the same lines and
for the same reasons, and that the interconnections between them were
sufficient to mean that we ought to think of the transformations through
which the Church went in England not as insular, but as the English part
of changes which were taking place over a much wider area.
The most important developments in the history of the English
Church in the seventh century seem to have been as follows. First, the
conversion of most of the royal houses in the generation from c 635.
The Italian mission to Kent appears to have been relatively unsuccessful
51
J. M. Wallace Hadrill, art. cit., 530.
52
Bede, Op. Hist, i, 139-40. The Revd. H. E. J. Cowdrey pointed this possibility
out to me.
53
E. John, The Social and Political Problems of the Early English Church',
Agricultural History Review, xviii (1970), Supplement, 58f.
54
J. F. Kenney, Sources for the Early History of Ireland (reprint 1966), 500-508.
after its first few years and the leading role in conversion from the 630's
seems to have been taken by the Irish mission which had come to
Lindisfarne from lona. Second, the acceptance of the authority of Rome
and of Canterbury; here the crucial event is the arrival of Theodore in
669. But the way had been prepared for Theodore by developments in
the 650's and 660's, by the turning towards Rome of such men as
Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop and by the defeat of the proponents of the
Celtic Easter. In this development Canterbury seems to have played
little part. It was men who had been brought up in Northumbria,
where the influence of lona was strongest, and the Prankish bishop
Agilbert, who were largely responsible. Third, the foundation of very
large numbers of monasteries in the second half of the century whereas
in the first half there had been very few. Fourth, the development of
learning in the last generation of the seventh century. Before the
coming of Theodore we know of no book composed nor of any
manuscript written in England. The age of Bede was very different.
Fifth, the great increase in power and wealth of the church by the end of
the seventh century. The rich bishops of Bede's day with their
apparently well-established powers must have been very unlike the
foreign missionaries of the early days of Christianity in England and the
well-built monasteries with their rich treasures unlike the simple accom-
modation of such as Aidan.
The same changes can be seen taking place in Gaul. In both England
and Gaul Irish missionaries can be seen to have had astonishing power.
They really do seem to have changed the way of life of many members
of formidable barbarian aristocracies. Those whom Columbanus
affected were Christians already, but his impact seems little less striking
than that of Aidan and his followers. The modus operand! of the Irish in
England and in Gaul seems to have been much the same and what
happened in one country throws light on the other. In the case of
Columbanus much seems to have been accomplished by force of
character expressing itself in defiance of the convenances of noble life. In
a famous incident he refused to bless the bastard sons of Theuderich,
delivering instead, before striding out, the remark that they would
never become kings, having been born in adultery. As he crossed the
threshold there was a great clap of thunder. Theuderich reflected that it
was unwise to provoke the Almighty by offending his servant and, like
a true barbarian king, concluded that the occasion called for a
timely and generous proffer. So he sent Columbanus rich gifts. All his
ministri got from the saint for their pains was the information that munera
impiomm reprobat Altissimus and they were pavifacti while the rich vessels
tumbled on the ground. Columbanus was/erox; he was audax et animo
vigens. He was also frightening in his power of prophecy, successfully
foretelling the doom of the kings.55 Refusal to conform to the ways of the
55
Ed. Krusch (as at n. 42 above), 87-8, 106.
world, and a demeanour towards the great which was aggressive to the
point of menace seem to have been, not the only elements, but certainly
important elements in his approach. Bede's story of Cedd's treatment of
Sigbert, king of Essex, is in the same genre. Cedd met the king coming
away from dinner with a comes whom he had excommunicated. Sigbert
dismounted and fell trembling at the saint's feet. Cedd, iratus, touched
him with his staff and told him that because he would not avoid the house
of a man who was damned 'in this same house shall you meet death'. So
Sigbert did.56 Notes of anger and defiance are recurrently struck in our
accounts of the Irish. Aidan, the most successful of the Irish missionaries
in England, was a man of milder spirit. But his conduct seems to have
been in essential ways the same. He too acted contrary to the ways of the
world. He rarely dined with the king; when he received gifts he gave
them to the poor and he did not give gifts to nobles who visited him.
Such a line of conduct may have seemed almost shocking to a society
accustomed to gift exchange. He too was the master of the stern word
and the frightening prophecy. 57 Of course such incidents occur in the
hagiography of many different times and places. The general similarity
to, for example, some incidents in Sulpicius' life of St Martin is clear. For
all that they probably do tell us something about how Irish missionaries
gained success partly by adopting the role of Old Testament prophets. 58
That Jonas, who was nearer at the time he wrote to Columbanus than
Bede was to Aidan and Cedd, tells the same kind of story about Irish
missionaries as does Bede strengthens the case for there being a
considerable degree of realism in what Bede tells us.
In both England and Gaul, especially northern and eastern Gaul, the
successes of missionaries were followed by the establishment of very
numerous monasteries. It has been calculated that forty monasteries
were founded in the dioceses of Therouanne, Cambrai, Tournai, and
Liege between 625 and 700, that is to say in an area which was largely
pagan until the seventh century. Elsewhere in Gaul there were many
new foundations. In both England and Gaul nunneries were prominent
among the new foundations, and the women who entered them were
often of very high birth. Such nunneries were in both countries, often
'double', that is to say they had an attached community of monks under
the rule of the abbess. This peculiar institution was characteristic both
of England and of Gaul and seems to have spread from Gaul to
England. It was not Irish in origin, nor, so far as it known, was it
Italian. Its origins must probably be sought in Gaul itself, or perhaps in
Spain. Why monasteries should have become so numerous in both
56 57
Bede, Op. Hist, i, 173-4. Bede, Op. Hist, i, 136, 156.
58
Cf. A. Mirgeler, Mutations of Western Christianity (trans. Quinn, 1964), 67.
59
E. de. Moreau, Histoire de I'Eglise en Belgique, as at n. 40 above, i, 131.
60
S. Hilpisch, Die Doppelkloster (1928); M. Bateson, 'Origin and History of Double
Monasteries', as at n. 18 above, P. Hunter Blair, World of Bede, 135-36.
England and Gaul and why nunneries should have been so important in
both is not clear. But it is clear that the social circumstances in both
countries were very favourable to monasticism and that English
monasticism owed very much to that of Gaul.
In both England and in Gaul noble monks and nuns seem often to
have expected to be nobly housed and surrounded by rich objects,
however severe their personal mode of life may have been. The same
contrast which can be drawn between the physical surroundings in
which Aidan lived and those of English ecclesiastics a couple of
generations later can be drawn between Columbanus, who lived in
simple huts, and the greater grandeur in which monasteries founded
somewhat later under his influence were housed. Most of the building
associated with the monastic movement in northern Gaul has been lost.
Such basilicas as that which Wandrille built of squared stone at
Fontenelle do not survive. But it is clear from descriptions and from
such surviving monuments as the crypt and tombs at Jouarre that, as in
England, the new monasteries were not infrequently provided with
buildings of some splendour. That there are similarities between some
English and some Merovingian architecture of the period is
unsurprising; Benedict Biscop got his masons from Gaul. It is likely
that further work will strengthen the evidence for the connection. For
example excavations at Deux Jumeaux and at Evrecy (dep. Calvados)
have uncovered remains of monasteries of the seventh and eighth
centuries bearing considerable resemblance to Monkwearmouth/
Jarrow at the same period. Sculpture (sometimes painted) was used as
architectural decoration in the same way as at Monkwearmouth/Jarrow
and, as is the case there, the motifs used are both those of
Mediterranean origin and barbaric beasts such as are found on the
metalwork of the period. A more precise parallel is the use at Evrecy of
incised baluster shafts very similar to those used at Monkwearmouth/
Jarrow.61 The Gaulish monasteries, like the English ones, were
provided with rich treasures. For example we have a seventeenth
century engraving of a wonderful chalice from Chelles. Of gold, a foot
high, inlaid, probably with garnets, in a cloisonne style similar to that of
some of the Sutton Hoo jewellery; it must have been such a chalice as
Aldhelm praises in his poem on Bugge's monastery.62
The remarkable developments in learning and in the production of
manuscripts in England in the age of Bede should probably, as Riche
61
I have not seen L. Musset's Deux Jumeaux. Resultats desfouilles sur le site de I'ancien
prieure (Caen, 1963) and know of these sites only from his articles in Bull, de la Soc. des
Antiquaires de Normadie, liii (1955-56), 116-68, 405-19; liv (1957-8), 571-82; and in Art
de Basse Normandie No. 23 (1961). It is believed that the finds at Deux Jumeaux date
from the seventh or eighth centuries while those at Evrecy seem somewhat later, but no
clear evidence of date seems to have been found.
62
A. de Saussay, Panoplia Sacerdotalis (Paris, 1681), 198-200.
63
has argued, be seen as part of a much wider movement. The parallel
between what happened in England and what happened in northern and
north eastern Gaul is again close.
So far as it known no manuscripts were written in England until the
late seventh century. Similarly in northern Gaul; there is nothing until
the second half of the seventh century. In that period Luxeuil becomes
'the first great writing centre of Merovingian Gaul'.64 Of the two major
foundations of Balthildis Corbie became a very important centre of
manuscript production, certainly in the eighth century and probably in
the seventh and Chelles was probably also the source of an important
series of manuscripts.65 If we include Chelles these three were easily the
most important sources of manuscripts known of in Gaul. Previously
Lyons and Autun had been the main centres of manuscript
production.66 But by 700 new monasteries in the north were taking the
lead from old Gallo-Roman episcopal centres further south, and their
scriptoria are the counterpart of the new monastic scriptoria in
England. It does not appear that books were composed in England until
about the beginning of the eighth century. We then have a considerable
number, not only the works of Bede and Aldhelm but a number of
lesser works, particularly saints' lives, from various centres. Similarly
in northern Gaul where in the last generation of the seventh century
books start to be composed in areas where they had not been composed
before. We have saints' lives from Rebais, Remiremont, Fontenelle,
Nivelles and Laon from between c 670 and 710 and the poems of
Theodfrid, first abbot of Corbie.67 This is not, it is true, a very
impressive body of literature, but it is not unlike what England
provided if we exclude the quite extraordinary achievement of Bede.
One is looking at the same kind of development taking place in the
same kind of new monastery in England and Gaul. Compare, for
example, Whitby and Chelles. Whitby was founded in 657 by Hilda,
who had been intending to go to Chelles which was refounded at about
the same time. Both monasteries were double. The most striking thing
about Whitby, particularly by comparison with the nunneries of later
centuries, is the intellectual activity there. Six bishops, Bede says, were
educated at Whitby. The first life of Gregory the Great, one of the first
books to have been composed in England, was written there.68 The
number of styluses etc. found in the excavations at Whitby is an
indication of how much writing went on.69 The evidence for
63
P. Riche, Education et culture, op. cit., 410-19.
64
E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, vi (1953), pp. xv-xvii.
65
Ibid., pp. xxii-xxvi.
66
Ibid., pp. xiii-xv.
67
Riche, Education et culture, op. cit., 412.
68
Op. Hist., i, 254-5.
69
C. Peers and C. A. Ralegh Radford, 'The Saxon Monastery at Whitby',
Archaeologia, Ixxxix (1943), 64-5.
comparable activity at Chelles is not absolutely watertight. One is
dependent on suppositions, though they are the suppositions of Lowe
and Bischoff.70 If they are right Chelles was the source of a series of
manuscripts in the late seventh and the eighth centuries, including the
earliest manuscript of the Gelasian sacramentary and a group of
manuscripts written for Hildebald archbishop of Cologne (785-819) by
nuns who wrote their names at the end of their work. It looks as if the
monastery Hilda founded was of much the same kind as the one she
nearly joined and as if both were of an unusual kind.
An important part in the development of learning in northern Gaul,
as in England, was played by direct contacts with Italy. St Gertrude, St
Ouen and St Amand looked to Italy for books in the same way as did
Benedict Biscop.71 That contact with Italy was important for milieux in
the Gaulish Church which were also under strong Irish influence is a
reminder that we should not be led by Bede's concentration on the
influences of lona and of Canterbury and by his great concern with the
Easter controversy to regard the contrasts between the 'Roman' and
'Celtic' churches as being generally sharp or invariably present. 'Italian'
and 'Irish' influences were not mutually exclusive. England came under
Irish influences not only directly, but indirectly, via Gaul. It came under
Italian influence not only directly, but indirectly via the Irish. As Mr
John has recently emphasised some of the things which have been
frequently discussed as if they were characteristic of the 'Roman' as
opposed to the 'Celtic' church were, in fact, particularly associated with
the Irish. The Irish were as often the friends as the enemies of papal
authority. Columbanus's fracas with Gregory the Great arose through
his trying to induce the Pope to impose the Irish Easter on the bishops
of Gaul. It seems to have been the Irish who were responsible for the
diffusion of the cult of St Peter in Gaul and it seems virtually certain
that it was largely through monasteries under the influence of
Columbanus that knowledge of the Benedictine rule was diffused in
Gaul in the seventh century. 3 Columbanus's foundation of Bobbio (for
which a papal exemption from the authority of the diocesan bishop was
early obtained) helped to give his successors a continuing and close
connection with Italy. The conflict over the calculation of the date of
Easter did indeed set some Irishmen and their disciples at odds with the
rest of western Christendom, and this conflict was by no means a trivial
one. But very many Irishmen both at home and abroad did not stick to
70
B. Bischoff, 'Die Kolner Nonnenhandschriften und das Skriptorium von Chelles',
Karolingische und Ottonische Kunst (1957), 395-411; E. A. Lowe, Codices . . ., vi, pp.
xxi-xxii.
71
P. Riche, Education et culture, op. cit., 382, 399.
72
E. John, 'The Social and Political Problems of the Early English Church', as at n.
53 above p. 59.
73
P. Riche, Education et culture, op. cit., 382-3.
their traditional reckonings; the dispute was quite as much one between
Irish and Irish as between Irish and non-Irish. The majority of the Irish
had probably abandoned the Celtic Easter by 650. In the seventh
century the Churches of England, Gaul and Ireland formed in some
ways one interconnected world and one in which the influence of Italy
and of Rome was strong and growing stronger. In such a world there is
nothing surprising in the demand for the adoption of the Roman Easter
in Northumbria having come from a man such as Wilfrid, who had
been a member of the community at Lindisfarne, or from Agilbert, a
Frank educated partly in Ireland. 'Italian' and 'Irish' influences remained
almost inextricably entwined together in the age of Bede. Theodore's
Penitential was largely based on Irish models and Wilfrid's combination
of episcopal power with that over a scattered family of monasteries
looks as if it was derived from Irish example.74
In general when English historians have discussed the development
of the English Church in the seventh century they have explained it
largely in terms of Italian and Irish influences, with those from Gaul
regarded as noteworthy, but secondary; and when they have looked
over the Channel they have been inclined not to focus their gaze until it
reaches somewhere about Lyons.75 There is a good case for giving
more weight to the relationships and similarities between England and
northern Gaul, and for regarding many of the developments which
took place in England as being part of wider movements which were
also affecting Gaul, and were such as to establish numerous connections
between England, Gaul and Ireland. Bede's interests and emphases have
in some degree obscured the extent to which this was so. His concern
with Canterbury and lona and the importance which he attached to the
Easter controversy have not infrequently led to the differences between
the Irish and other churches being overstressed. Because he looked so
earnestly to Italy and to Rome historians have tended to follow him,
not always giving due weight to the extent to which this impulse to
turn towards Rome was something which had come to England from
Gaul and Ireland. In so far as it was not part of Bede's intention in the
Ecclesiastical History to seek to give anything like a full account of the
foundation of monasteries he does not bring home to its readers how
large the number of monasteries founded in later seventh and early
eighth century England was. This wave of monastery-founding
corresponds to and is clearly connected with a similar wave in northern
74
E. John, 'Social and Political Problems . . .' as at n. 53 above, 59-61; Mr. John
compares Wilfrid's position with that of Columbanus; that of the bishops of Armagh
may present a closer parallel, K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (1966), 69,
86.
75
This is not, of course, true of the important articles by Dr. Wallace Hadrill and
Mr. John already cited; and cf. M. Deanesly, 'Early English and Gallic Ministers',
Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 4th ser. xxiii (1941), 25-70.
Gaul. Quite what the social forces were which led to the establishment
of so many monasteries in England and in Gaul in this period is not at
all clear, but it is a reasonable assumption that these forces were the
same on both sides of the Channel. Bede's reticence on aspects of the
life of the Church in his own way obscures the extent to which its
bishops and abbeys were like those of Merovingian Gaul. It would be
absurd to maintain that the English Church was exactly like the Church
in Gaul. To take only the most obvious differences: the Church in Gaul
did not produce a Bede and did not have a Theodore. All kinds of
influences, some of them from very distant places, helped to mould the
Church in England. But amongst them that of Gaul was of primary,
not secondary, importance.
The establishment and burgeoning of the Church in seventh century

England can be seen as part of a wider movement in which lands on the
northern and eastern fringes of Gaul regained some of the Roman
civilisation which they had lost in the barbarian invasions. In that
movement the influence of Gaul must have been very important. After
their conquests of the late fifth and early sixth centuries the
Merovingian kings were the only rulers north of the Alps and Pyrenees
who ruled states in which much of Rome survived. To the peoples on
the borders of Gaul the Merovingian regime must, whatever it appears
like to modern readers of Gregory of Tours, have been the most
impressive and the most Roman they knew. The influence of Prankish
Gaul was wide. Theudebert was gaining power over much of western
Germany at the same time as his ambassadors were trying to
demonstrate at Byzantium his authority in Britain. At just the same
time there is evidence for Gaulish influence in Wales while pottery
apparently of Prankish origin, evidence it may be for trade, is found
round the northern shores of the Irish Sea.76 While Prankish objects of
luxury were in demand in sixth century England warriors in Norway
seem to have been changing their weapon kit in accordance with
Prankish practice.77 At the time in the seventh century when Prankish
ecclesiasts were venturing in England in search of souls or of
preferment a Prankish adventurer, Samo, was establishing some kind of
authority in Bohemia. How like some of the kings of England were to
Merovingian kings at the beginnings of the seventh century is an open
question: what is certain is that they were far more like Merovingian
kings by the end of that century. They were Christians, they had
76
V. E. Nash Williams, Early Christian Monuments of Wales (1950), e.g. p. 104; C.
Thomas, 'Imported Pottery in Dark Age Western Britain', Medieval Archaeology, iii
(1959), 89-111.
77
H. Shetelig and H. Falk, Scandinavian Archaeology (1937), 262-3.
78
bishops, some of them had written law-codes, some of them were
issuing coins modelled on Merovingian coins. An English king such as
Aldfrith was literate, and could receive a treatise from such a scholar as
Aldhelm, advising him on the art of metrical composition.79 Like some
Prankish or Visigothic rulers he could have, or be deemed to have, a
taste for literary amusements derived from those of Rome. There is
even evidence to suggest that the great of England in the seventh
century came to dress themselves in the styles of late antiquity. 80 The
English kingdoms were becoming as it were sub-Roman states at
second remove. It is hard to believe that the models they imitated were
not, for the most part, those of Gaul.
78
For important remarks on the law codes, J. M. Wallace Hadrill in Settimane, vii
(1960), as at n. 22 above, 528, 539.
79
Ed. R. Ehwald, Opera (M.G.H. Auct. Ant., xv, 1919), pp. 61-204.
80
E. Crowfoot and S. C. Hawkes, Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids, Mediev
Archaeol., xi (1967), 64, quoting Aldhelm De Virginitate. It is possible that Aldhelm
derived this description of female dress from a continental source but the authors
mention archaeological evidence also.
I should have referred to F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum in Frankenreich (Munich, 1965), a

mine of information. At the time of writing I had not seen F. Kriiger, Ko'nigsgrabkirchen
der Franken, Angelsachsen und Langobarden bis zur Mitte des S.Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1971)
which raises many questions about England's relationship to a wider world. For
Wilfrid, G. Isenberg, Die Wuordigung Wilfrieds von York in der Historia Gentis Anglorum
Beadas und der Vita Wilfridi der Eddius (Weidenau/Sieg 1978) is of special importance. See
also M. Gibbs, 'The Decrees of Agatho and the Gregorian Plan for York', Speculum,
xlviii (1973), pp. 213-46 and D. P. Kirby's article of 1983 (for which see the
bibliographical note to Chapter 1 above). Two significant articles on the relations
between England and Gaul are: P. Sims-Williams, 'Continental Influences at Bath
Monastery in the Seventh Century', Anglo-Saxon England, iv (1975), pp. 1-10 and E.
Fletcher, 'The Influence of Merovingian Gaul on Northumbria in the Seventh
Century', Medieval Archaeology, xix (1980), pp. 69-86.
2. Scenes from the life of Christ. This sixth-century Italian Gospel book may
well have been brought to England by St. Augustine. (Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College, MS. 286, f. 125)
4
Observations on the Conversion of England
It is appropriate that the 1300th anniversary of Bede's birth should be

marked by the publication of the best account so far written of the
conversion of England. Dr Henry Mayr-Harting's The Coming of
Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England.1 Learned, perceptive and
eloquent, it illuminates its subject in innumerable ways. The main focus
of its author's concern is, he says, with the clergy rather than with the
laity. He is above all concerned to describe 'how Christianity itself was
fashioned in this island, how churchmen prepared themselves by prayer,
study and travel as well as by social awareness, to Christianise their
world, and how they conceived their task'. His emphasis is 'rather on
those who spread the Gospel than on those to whom it was spread'.
While his work is more comprehensive than his own account of it might
suggest, it is true that there are aspects of the conversion of which he has
little to say. The purpose of the present article is to offer some passing
and incomplete observations on some of the problems of when, how and
with what effects the English became Christians. They are made partly in
the light of Dr Mayr-Harting's account, partly in some degree to
supplement it.2
The first question is, when did the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons
begin? Bede's answer is clear: in 597. It would be absurd to question the
substantial truth of what he says in so far as it applies to the arrival of the
institutional Church and the beginning of the main stream of conversion;
but it may not be the whole truth. Bede does not appear well informed on
sixth century England. He knew relatively little even of Augustine's
mission beyond what the letters of Gregory the Great told him. When he
wrote De Temporibus, in 703, before he was familiar with those letters, he
appeared unaware even of the true date of the English mission and it is 'at
least doubtful whether he knew anything about Gregory's connection
with the mission or about Augustine'. 3 It may be that the full story of the
conversion of the English begins earlier than Bede's straightforward
account would suggest. We do know of two Englishmen who were
Christians before the coming of Augustine. Their names were Pilu and
1
1972.
2
Among the important and relevant themes not even touched on below are those of
the development of the cult of royal saints and of the development of the independent
power of the Church in the later seventh century.
3
P. Hunter Blair, The Age of Bede (1970), 68-9.
69
Genereus, and they were at lona before the death of Columba, who died
in 597.4 Beyond this we have to depend on the speculative assessment of
possibilities and plausibilities.
Some of the German settlers in Britain arrived before Roman rule
ended. Of those who came later some, and perhaps many, were from
peoples who had been active within or on the borders of the Empire.
Bede's account of the origins of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes should
not lead us to suppose that all the invaders came more or less directly
from such insipid milieux as those of Kiel or Cuxhaven. The
archaeological and literary evidence strongly suggests that some came
from the Rhineland and from other areas in western Germany.5 Some
Saxons had long been associated with Franks; some settled in Gaul; and
of these some may ultimately have come to Britain.6 England did not
become isolated after the period of invasion. It is clear that East Kent in
particular had connections and intercourse in many directions. So some
of the invaders were probably men who were familiar with the Roman,
or a Romanised, world and some parts of England remained fairly
closely connected with the Rhineland and with Gaul. That is to say that
to some extent Anglo-Saxon England formed part of an interconnected
German world in other parts of which Christianity was known. It has,
for example, become clear during the last generation that even in the
Rhineland strong Christian communities survived the fall of the
Empire. 7 The first Saxons we know to have become Christians did so
in about 560. They were living in the diocese of Nantes, in an area
which we know to have had commercial contact with England.8 It may
not be irrelevant to observe that the great increase in the later sixth and
early seventh centuries in the number of bishops in northern and central
Gaul, and in the Rhine and Moselle valleys, who bore Germanic names
suggests that the German ruling class in these areas was becoming more
committed to or involved in the Church than had previously been the
case.9 We can feel fairly sure that there were Anglo-Saxons before 597
4
Adomnan's Life of Columba, ed. A. O. and M. O. Anderson (1961), 486 and 512.
Genereus was the community's baker.
5
E.g., J. N. L. Myres, Anglo-Saxon Pottery and the Settlement of England (1969), 77.
Bede, H. E., V, ix (above, p. 53, n. 25) would be consonant with a movement from the
Rhineland and from western parts of Germany in the fifth century. In view of the odd
reference in this passage to Huns it is not without interest that according to Priscus, Attila
boasted that he ruled over 'the islands in the ocean'. C. E. Stevens, 'Gildas Sapiens', Eng.
Hist. Rev., Ivi (1941), 363, n. 9.
6
Above, p. 54.
7
For an indication of the strength of the archaelogical evidence see e.g., Frtihchristliche
Zeugnisse in Einzugsgebiet von Rhein und Mosel, ed. T. F. Kempf and W. Reusch (Trier
1965).
8
Above, p. 54, n. 26.
9
H. Wieruzowski, 'Die Zusammensetzung des gallischen und frankischen
Episkopats', BannerJahrbucher, cxxvii (1922), 1-83, esp. 14. While it cannot be assumed
that nomenclature is necessarily a secure guide to racial origin (ibid., 15, 25) the
Observations on the Conversion of England 71
to whom the sight of a basilica, or of a bishop, would not have come as
a surprise. We may think it likely that German Christians came to
England and perfectly possible that Englishmen became Christians. We
should perhaps look at the conversion of Kent in the context of some
general change in the relationship towards the Church of German
peoples living in areas of the Continent with which that kingdom
certainly had contacts and which it may have resembled more closely
than it did most of the rest of England.
Adomnan's reference to Saxon monks at lona is a reminder that the
missionaries to Northumbria in the 630's may not have been the first
Irishmen to seek English souls. A late life of St Columba of Terryglass,
thought to contain early materials, at least says that he visited an
(unnamed) English kingdom about the middle of the sixth century, and
adds the circumstantial detail that cremation was practiced there.1 An
ogham inscription of Silchester bears witness to the presence of two,
presumably Christian, Irishmen there at about the time of Augustine. 11
It is not an impressive body of evidence. But if Irish monks came to
England at or before the time of Columbanus's venture to Gaul in 590 it
is not only uncertain, but even unlikely, that our sources are good
enough to have informed us of this.12 We do happen to know, thanks to
Bede's preservation of part of a letter from Archbishop Laurentius, that
an Irish bishop, called Dagan, came to Kent at some time in the first or
second decade of the seventh century. - That we have this incidental
reference to one such visit strengthens the case for entertaining the
possibility that there were others. 4
The most difficult and important problems in relation to Christianity
contention that very marked increases in the proportions of bishops with Germanic
names is significant seems just; and at the very least it must be significant of a great
increase in the acceptability of Germanic names. It is of some interest that the
appearance of the first Bishop of Cologne to bear a Germanic name (in 590) marks the
point from which the series of bishops is continuously known, Friihchristliches Koln
(Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne 1965), 11.
10
J. Morris in Christianity in Britain, 300-700, ed. M. W. Barley and R. P. C.
Hanson (1968), 66; J. F. Kenney, Sources for the Early History of Ireland (1929), 385-6.
11
If one may so paraphrase Professor K. Jackson's reported opinion on the date of
the inscription: 'the form of the lettering probably precludes a date significantly earlier
than the seventh century although the linguistic forms could suit better a rather earlier
date', Mediev. Anhaeoi, lii (1959), 87.
12
The evidence suggests that even in the seventh century there could have been Irish
monasteries in England of which our sources say nothing, see above, pp. 51-52.
13
Bede, H. E. II, iv.
14
It has to be borne in mind that in this period Irish immigration into western parts
of Britain was on a large scale. Professor C. Thomas goes so far as to say that 'It is by
no means improbable that, during the fifth and sixth centuries A. D., the sum total of
Irish settlers and their families in western Britain equalled or even exceeded that of the
various Germanic tribes on Britain's eastern and southern shores', Britain and Ireland in
Early Christian Times (1971), 66.
among the English before 597 have to do with their relationship to the
Britons. They thus involve the great issue of "continuity". This is
hardly the place to venture into that desert where one man's mirage is
another's oasis. At least it can be said with confidence that of the
Christians living in England in Bede's day very many owed their faith
to traditions which went back beyond Augustine to the British Church.
This must have been true of Wessex where Britons conquered after 658
were living under English rule, where it is not unlikely that British
religious houses were absorbed into the West Saxon Church and where
relations with the British Church may have been more friendly than
they were elsewhere. It is highly probable that Northumbria contained
considerable numbers of British Christians. The same could be true of
parts of Mercia.15 Within south-eastern England a considerable area
north and north-west of London remained in British hands until within
a generation of 597.16 It may have included St Alban's, where, Bede
says, and the weighty authority of Levison accepts, that the cult of the
saint was maintained from Roman times until the eighth century.17 If
so, when Saeberht, King of Essex, was converted by Augustine's
mission he had already had a Christian shrine within his kingdom.18
The presence of two place-names in Norfolk and one in Kent
containing the element 'eccles' (which seems to derive from the British
word for a church) is suggestive of the survival of British churches in
the south-east.19 The survival, or possible survival, of Christian Britons
under Anglo-Saxon rule does not, in itself, contradict Bede's
adamantine insistence that the Britons did nothing to convert his
countrymen. 20 It does suggest that he is unlikely to have been entirely
right.
Until the last generation of the sixth century and the first of the
seventh we have little knowledge of the deeds of Anglo-Saxon kings. As
soon as, thanks to Bede, we have more information than the curt annals
of the Chronicle afford, we find that kings have close relationships with
their Christian neighbours. The king of Kent married a Christian
princess.21 The sons of a king of Northumbria went into exile among
the Christian Scots.22 A pagan war-lord in Mercia allied with a
15
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, 118-20; H. P. R. Finberg, Lucerna,
(1964), 4-6, 85, 98; K. Jackson, 'Angles and Saxons in Northumbria and Cumbria' in
Angles and Britons (O'Donnell Lectures, Cardiff, 1963, no editor), 60-84, cf. G. W. S.
Barrow, 'Northern English Society . . .', Northern History, iv (1969), 1-17.
16
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1947), 27.
17
H. E. I, vii; W. Levison, 'St. Alban and St. Alban's', Antiquity, xv (1941), 350-9.
18
On the assumption that Hertfordshire was within the kingdom of Essex.
19
K. Cameron in Christianity in Britain, 300-700, op. tit., 87-92.
20
Cf. K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (1966), 43 for British ecclesiastical
legislation tending to bear out what Bede says.
21
Bede, H. E. I, xxvi.
22
H. E. Ill, i; cf. IV, xxiii.
23
Christian king in Wales. Such relationships of marriage, exile and
alliance may have been new, happening for the first time at just the
period when we have a source which will reveal them. The assumption
is defensible, but a large one. It is equally likely that they were not new
and that Anglo-Saxon kings had for long had relations with Christians
and Christian relatives.
It is possible then that the arrival of Augustine begins not the first,
but a later, stage in the conversion of England. The English were
exposed from more directions than one to Christian influences which
may have been growing in strength during the sixth century. In
England, as elsewhere in the former Empire, we should perhaps
imagine a kind of proto-Christianity preceding the re-establishment of
an organised Church. It may have been a world in which there were a
considerable number of Christian survivals or half-survivals, one in
which Christians and the Church were not universally unfamiliar, and
in which individual Christians and conversions were known. The
possibility of there having been both Churches and missions of which
our sources tell us nothing has always to be borne in mind. To be
convinced of this one has only to contrast the written and the
archaeological records for Christian survival in parts of the Rhineland,
or to reflect how numerous are the seventh century missions of which,
were it not for Bede, we should know nothing.
Whatever may have happened before 597 there can be no doubt that
the series of royal conversions which began with Augustine's mission
was of the utmost importance. What persuaded English kings to
become Christians? In the first place argument, no doubt. Our only
indication of the arguments brought to bear on Ethelbert comes in
Gregory's letter to the king. The Pope stressed that God could make
the king's 'glorious name still more glorious even to posterity' (citing
the example of Constantine) and drew attention to indications of the
imminence of the end of the world. In the appeal to the love of glory, to
Roman example and to fear may be recognised the experienced touch of
one whose dealings with the Lombards must have made him an old
hand at coping with barbarian potentates. Bede's fullest account of a
conversion is of that of Edwin of Northumbria.25 Here two main
emphases appear. One is that of the famous account of the nobleman
who compared a man's life to a small bird flying through a hall in
winter, in one door and out the other, from the unknown to the
unknown: Christianity explains the mysteries of life and death. The
second emphasis (it is one which appeared time and again in the
23
H. E. II, xx.
24
H. £. I, xxxii (written after Ethelbert had accepted the faith). (For a detailed
account of the sources relating to the arguments used in preaching to the Germans see
R. E. Sullivan, 'The Carolingian Missionary and the Pagan', Speculum, xxviii (1953),
25
703-40, esp. 715-8). H. E. II, ix-xiv.
'Ecclesiastical History') is that God will reward his followers with
victory and wealth here on earth. Edwin put this contention to a
successful trial before he undertook to renounce idols. A third line of
argument appears in Bede's account of the conversion of King Sigbert
of Essex. Here the inanities of idol-worship alone are stressed. The
longest account from an English context of arguments for use in
conversion conies in Bishop Daniel's letter to St Boniface (723-4)
advising him on how to approach the pagan Germans.27 He advises two
lines of argument. One is to tie the heathen in dialectical knots 'calmly
and with great moderation', so making them ashamed of the
illogicalities and follies of paganism 'more out of confusion than
exasperation'. The other is to demonstrate that pagan gods looked after
their servants ill. Ask them, Daniel says, why their gods have left them
in 'the frozen lands of the north', 'while the Christians are allowed to
possess the countries that are rich in wine and oil'. It would be quite
wrong to assume that missionaries saw, or kings came to see, their faith
as confined to such coarse simplicities.28 It is, however, a fair
assumption that the initial arguments often enough relied heavily on the
contentions that pagans were fools and Christians prospered.
Kings, being kings, were influenced by considerations of power.
They could be taught to fear and enlist the power of the Almighty.
They did not need teaching to respect that of a great overlord. It has
long been recognised that the first expansion of Christianity from Kent
to Essex and East Anglia reflected the authority of Ethelbert as overlord
of southern England and that its first retreat from those kingdoms was a
consequence of Kent's loss of power. Dr Mayr-Harting carries this line
of argument further in his account of the conversion of Edwin. He
suggests that it is significant both that Edwin was not converted until
after the death of Redwald of East Anglia (who had been his protector
and whose power derived from 'his shaking off the overlordship and the
Christianity of Ethelbert') and also that, once baptised, the first thing
Edwin did was to secure the baptism of Eorpwald, Redwald's
successor. 'He made sure to set the tune for the East Anglian king to
play'. 29 The connection between the power of a Christian overlord and
26
H. E. Ill, xxii.
27
5. Bonifatii et Lullii Epistolae (M. G. H. Epistolae Selectae, i), ed. M. Tangl (1916),
No. 23. I have used the translation by C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in
Germany (1954). The arguments suggested contain little that is specifically Christian, and
could have been employed by an Arian, or a Jew.
28
See p. 11 above. Cf. H. E. Ill, v, for the lack of success of a missionary who failed to
begin by offering the milk of simpler teaching.
29 The Coming of Christianity, 66-7. Dr. Mayr-Harting's acceptance of Dr. D. P.
Kirby's argument that Paulinus went north as early as 619 needs reconsideration in the
light of P. Hunter Blair's discussion of the issues of England before the Conquest, ed. P.
Clemoes and K. Hughes (1971), 5-14. The details, but not the main lines, of Dr. Mayr-
Harting's argument are affected.
the conversion of other kings is most obvious in the time of the
Northumbrian overlords, Oswald and Oswy. The conversion of the
kings of Wessex, Essex and Middle Anglia was in whole or in part the
responsibility of one of these rulers.30
It is possible that the relationship of godfather to godson was of
special importance in these conversions. We know that Oswald stood
godfather to Cynegils of Wessex. It is likely, though not stated by
Bede, that Oswy was godfather to Sigbert of Essex and to Peada of
Middle Anglia, since both were baptised in Northumbria. When Bede
tells us of the baptism of a king in England and names a godfather, the
godfather is also a king.31 His most revealing account of such a baptism
is of that of Aethelwalh of Sussex, which took place at some time
before the death of Wulfhere of Mercia (658-674) and presumably at a
time when Wulfhere was overlord in southern England. Aethelwalh
was baptised in Mercia 'in the presence and at the suggestion of King
Wulfhere who, when Aethelwalh came forth from the font, accepted
him as a son. As a token of his adoption Wulfhere gave him two
provinces, namely the Isle of Wight and the province of the
Meonware'. Here, apparently, is an overlord standing godfather to a
lesser king (though one cannot be quite sure that the godfathership is
what Bede means to imply) and this relationship associated with that of
adoption. Adoption was important to the Anglo-Saxons. For example,
in 'Beowulf, after the hero has killed Grendel, King Hrothgar says he
will regard him as his son, and the language used ('henceforth keep well
this new kinship') suggests that this statement was more formal and
carried more weight than a mere figure of speech.32 Furthermore the
laws of Ine illustrate how a godfather-godson relationship could be
regarded as establishing ties comparable to those of blood. Such
relationships may have had importance in linking overlords and lesser
kings because they created such ties and provided means of uniting
dignified subordination with mutual obligation.
In stressing the connections between Christianity and overlordship
(and there are others besides those mentioned here) we must beware of
being positive that the courts and the policies of these kings were so
strongly coloured by Christianity as Bede may wish us to believe. For
example, his account of the conversion of Sigbert of Essex shows that
Sigbert was a frequent visitor to Oswy's court before he became a
Christian, that is to say into the 650's.34 The marriage of Oswy's
30
H. E. Ill, vii; III, xxii; III, xxi.
31
H. E. Ill, xxii; IV, xiii.
32
Lines 946-9, translation by J. R. Clark Hall revised by C. R. Wrenn (1950), 69; cf.
lines 1, 175-6.
33
Ine, c. 76. (On the compensation payable to a godfather for the killing of a
godson, and conversely.)
34
H. E. Ill, xxii.
daughter to Penda's son (653), Oswy's son already having married
Penda's daughter, justifies the supposition that Penda himself was for a
time among Oswy's pagan allies. Bede does not say so in so many
words, but his readers would hardly have missed the implication, and it
is presumably for this reason that Bede, who otherwise has hardly a
good word to say for Penda, at this juncture thinks fit to present him to
the role of Good Pagan, one who tolerated missionaries and despised
Christians who did not obey the precepts of their faith.35
Kings might be convinced by the arguments advanced by
missionaries and they might take these more seriously to heart if they
were backed by the power of a bretwalda. However the initial step was
taken, some kings can hardly have failed to notice the advantages which
the Church offered to rulers. The acceptance of Christianity was often
followed by the introduction of more sophisticated means of
government and the Christianization of England may be seen as part of
a process whereby the English kingdoms became more like those of
Gaul.36 The Church may have provided means to power even more
important than those associated with, for example, the introduction of
written laws. Looked at very generally the political development of
England in the seventh century can be seen as marked by two great
movements, which provided new opportunities and new problems for
certain kings. The first is the creation or wide extension of the three
frontier kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and their
gaining power at the expense of those of the south and east. The
second, largely associated with the first, is the absorption, by fair means
or foul, of small kingdoms into larger ones. In both movements
Christianity had a part to play. The new or newly enlarged kingdoms
of the frontier were of the unprecedented size. The Church may have
been of great service to kings in reaching and controlling their peoples.
The most obvious case is that of Northumbria. There is little reason to
doubt that by the time of Aidan a considerable proportion of the
inhabitants of Northumbria were Britons.37 If so it may have mattered
to its kings to be associated with Celtic ecclesiastics. The monastic
movement which began to affect the Celtic world in the sixth century
seems to have aroused great enthusiasm and its effects may sometimes
have amounted almost to the reconversion of peoples whose
Christianity had become dormant.38 When such a movement was
brought to Celtic population by English kings, upon whom the holy
35
H.E. Ill, xxi.
36
Pp. 65-67 above.
37
P. 72 above.
38
J. Morris, 'The Celtic Saints', Past and Present, No 11 (1957), 1-14 and TheDatesof
the Celtic Saints', Journ. of Theological Studies, new ser., xvii (1966), 342-91, for a fairly
extreme view. J. Ryan, Irish Monasticism (1931), 104-45, and L. Gougaud, Les Chretientes
Celtiques, 2nd ed. (Paris 1911), chapter 3, for others less so.
men looked with favour, the kings presumably gained. In general kings
needed obedience and veneration from kingdoms to large parts of
which their dynasties were new and which contained tracts of wild
country inhabited by men hardly less so; areas as such as men like
Cuthbert set themselves to penetrate.
With some English kings in the seventh century as with Prankish kings
in the eighth conquest went hand in hand with Christianity. Bede
provides extensive materials for the study of Christian conquerors. It
may suffice here to consider one extreme and sordid example. It is his
account of the conquest of the Isle of Wight by Caedwalla, King of
Wessex, in 686.39 Wight was an independent or semi-independent
kingdom with a dynasty of its own and it was pagan, probably the last
kingdom to remain so. Caedwalla attacked it and sought to wipe out its
inhabitants. Though not yet baptised he acted in association with St
Wilfrid, to whom he promised a quarter of the island. When he captured
two boys, brothers of the island's king, he killed them, acting no doubt
according to the practical wisdom of the day which saw that the only safe
member of a rival dynasty was a dead one. He did, however, allow them
to be baptised first so that 'they gladly submitted to temporal death'.
Wilfrid duly received his share of the island and assigned it to one of his
clergy, a nephew of his, as it happened. He associated a priest with him to
teach and to baptise. The men of Wight had lost their independence, but
gained the faith. It is likely that in such a conquest as this, as with
conquests made by the Franks, conversion was an aid to subjection. It
may well be that there was an association in minds of men such as those
of Wight between their old rulers and their old gods. A new power
established a new faith; and a new faith may have helped to establish a
new power.
The mere presence of ecclesiastics, almost irrespective of what they
did, may have been of advantage to kings. If one of the signs of and
means to royal power was to have a great hall full of noblemen, drinking
hard and royally entertained, then the presence of important strangers,
equipped with luxurious objects and performing unusual ceremonies,
may have been in itself of value, not only, though perhaps principally,
because it indicated connection with distant powers, but also as a source
of interest and entertainment. The king who took a Columbanus or a
Cedd on with such a end in view would, of course, have got more than he
bargained for. But the attraction to barbarian kings of things which to us
may seem trivial appears, for example, in Bede's account of the
behaviour of the sons of Saeberht, King of Essex, after the death of their
father (616 or 617).4U They were pagans, but they nevertheless demanded
from Bishop Mellitus the communion bread. 'Why don't you offer us
39
H.E. IV, xiv.
40
H.E. II, v.
the white bread which you used to give to our father Saba?' The bishop
said they would have to be baptised first. They replied, 'We are not going
into that font, for we do not know that we stand in any need of it. All the
same, we will eat that bread'. Whether they wanted the bread because it
was magic bread, or simply because it was white bread, we cannot tell. In
either case Bede's little story suggests the attractions of the unfamiliar
things which were the incidentals of Christian worship.
To turn from the piety and power of kings to the conversion of the
mass of Anglo-Saxons is to pass from a flickering light to greater
darkness. Bede tells us that the conversion of kings was followed by the
conversion, sometimes the mass conversion, of subjects. It is clear,
however, that many could remain pagan for long afterwards. The first
English king to forbid the worship of idols was, he says, Earconberht,
King of Kent, 640-64.41 He does not tell us who the next was and
leaves us in the dark as to when it was that all the English became at
least nominally Christian. The general tenor of the 'Ecclesiastical
History' suggests that this stage had been reached by the time he was
writing it, in c. 731. The last pagan kingdom was probably Wight,
whose conversion did not begin until 686.42 It is strange that Bede
should not provide more than approximate means of knowing when
the public exercise of pagan cults ended. It is easy to imagine that many
of the nominally Christian had only a limited knowledge of their faith
and remained in many ways pagans, and this must have been so. Yet
even here much of the evidence turns in the hand as one seeks to use it.
For example, Bede, in his 'Life of Cuthbert', has a famous story of how
a vulgaris turba watched some monks drifting out to sea on rafts and said
'Let no man pray for them, and may God have no mercy on any of
them, for they have robbed men of their old ways of worship and how
the new worship is to be conducted, nobody knows'.43 This painful
scene can be taken to show 'how slow was the progress of Christianity
in the more remote districts and in fact everywhere'.44 But was this
turba one of imperfectly converted pagans? Is it not more likely that
they were Christians objecting to changes which had been brought
about in their worship by the monastery from which the monks came?
Their remarks as quoted would be more consonant with their being
Christians and few students of ecclesiastical history can regard more
than a moderately extensive change in modes of worship as required to
ensure that some of the conservative faithful would allow the
innovators to drift beyond the horizon on rafts of fire-wood. Again, we
may deduce from much of what Bede says that the Church was, for a
41
H.E. Ill, viii.
42
P. 77 above.
43
Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, ed. B. Colgrave (1940), 163-5.
44
Ibid., 343 (Colgrave's commentary); cf. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity,
240-1.
considerable time, short of manpower. Priests were few and much
depended on the bishop himself, touring his diocese and bringing the
sacraments to his flock, it may be annually. No doubt this was
sometimes or often so. But it is not easy to estimate how far it was so at
a given date. It may be that Bede's concentration upon bishops and
saints gives us a misleading impression that what may be called rank
and file missionaries and priests were fewer than in fact they were.
Certainly there were by the end of the seventh century numerous, it
may be very numerous, monasteries, very many of which would have
some degree of pastoral responsibility. 5
We cannot doubt that there were many pagan survivals and that
pagan and Christian beliefs and attitudes naturally became very much
involved together.46 Here again our evidence fails in chronological
precision. One of the essential difficulties is that such survivals and
interactions went on for so long. It is legitimate to point to the mid-
seventh century Finglesham brooch with its heathen figure, perhaps of
Woden, or to the persistence of pagan place-names as evidence for the
strength of paganism.47 But pagan pictures are with us yet (of immense
size, and brazenly flaunted on hill-sides)48 and so, too, are pagan place-
names. Once these things stood for living paganism; now they are
interesting survivals. In between lies a whole series of transitions of
attitude towards them. But how can we tell whether one of the
generations after the initial conversion saw a more decisive change in
attitude than another, or whether such a generation was early or late?
The period was one of drastic and rapid change, yet our sources are
such as to drive us to blur the distinctions between generations, very
different from one another though we know they must have been.
In determining the chronology of the conversion of the mass of the
population archaeology is becoming increasingly helpful. In recent
years attention has been drawn to a series of cemeteries in many parts of
the country which appear to mark a transition from paganism to
Christianity in the seventh century. 49 The graves do not normally
contain grave-goods except in so far as the dead were buried in their
ordinary dress with fastenings and ornaments with such adjuncts of
everyday wear as knives. In Kent some of these cemeteries begin in the
early seventh century, but generally the period of use appears to have
45
Above, pp. 51-52.
46
W. A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (1970) contains an
extensive account of much of what is involved.
47
As Dr. Mayr-Harting does, The Coming of Christianity, 64.
48
E.g. the Cerne Abbas giant is a pagan figure if ever there was one.
49
M. Hyslop, 'Two Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries a t . . . Leighton Buzzard', Archaeolog.
Journ., cxx (1963), 161-200 and, most recently, A. L. Meaney and S. C. Hawkes, Two
Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries at Winnall (Society for Medieval Archaeology, Monograph
Series, no 4, 1970). Miss Hyslop suggests that such cemeteries can be identified in Beds.,
Berks., Cambs., Hants., Oxon., Somerset, Surrey and Yorks.
been from about the middle of the seventh century until about the
middle of the eighth. A number of these cemeteries are near earlier
pagan cemeteries, suggesting a deliberate move from an old to a new
site. Although the study of these cemeteries is not yet fully developed
and the inferences on which they are judged to be Christian are not
absolutely secure it does look as if they provide evidence for the
conversion of the communities concerned. In the course of the eighth
century the deposit of grave-gods of any kind ceased and it appears that
cemeteries were then generally moved to sites beside churches within
towns and villages.50
Perhaps the most important, but by no means the least difficult,
source for the extent to which England was converted by the early
eighth century is the secular and canon law of the period. The
implications of some of this material are to a surprising degree other
than what one might a priori have expected. They suggest strict royal
control in the interests of the Church and extensive ecclesiastical control
over the life of the laity. For example, the laws of Ine impose heavy
penalties for failure to have a child baptised within forty days of birth or
for working on a Sunday.51 Earconberht of Kent, Bede tells us, not
only forbade the worship of idols but also, more remarkably, enforced
principali auctoritate the observance of the forty days Lenten fast. The
relationship between royal and ecclesiastical laws and powers was close,
and important both to kings and to the Church. For example, it has
recently been fairly convincingly argued that Ine of Wessex's
enforcement of rights of sanctuary would have been of great advantage
to the king in so far as it could have ensured that fleeing criminals who
took sanctuary would either have become royal slaves or paid heavily
to the king. On this argument a sanctuary was inter alia a royal slave-
trap. 52
The Penitential of Theodore and the Dialogue of Egbert seem to show
an elaborately organised Church and priests exercising close control
over their flocks, above all through penance. Not the least of Dr. Mayr-
Harting's virtues is that he uses these canon law sources, of which some
of his predecessors have tended to fight shy. 'It is,' he says, 'in the field
of penance that we see most clearly the attempt to project an ideal
monastic life on to society as a whole.'53 Laymen, like monks, were
expected to put the whole of their moral lives under the close direction
50
For the importance of the study of cemeteries in the Celtic lands and for important
observations upon certain English cemeteries see C. Thomas, The Early Christian
Archaeology of North Britain (1971), Chapter 3.
51
Ine, c.2, c.3. For Sabbatarianism in the period see Adomnan's Life ofColumba, ed.
Anderson and Anderson, op. cit., 25-8.
52
C. H. Riggs, Criminal Asylum in Anglo-Saxon Law (University of Florida
Monographs, Social Science No 18, 1963), Chapter 1.
53
The Coming of Christianity, 257.
of a priest. The penitential codes which developed in the Celtic
churches and spread, above all via the collections made under the
influence of Theodore in England, to the western Church as a whole,
were to guide confessors. Occasionally such a code may be seen to
temper the wind to the shorn barbarian lamb, as in the extremely light
penance imposed in Theodore's Penitential on a man who slays at the
command of his lord - forty days abstention from church, while
accidental killing required a year's penance and other kinds of killing far
more.54 But in general they speak of a minute and rigorously
puritanical rule of conduct and of conscience.
The great question in regard to both secular and ecclesiastical codes is
that of how far they were expressions in the main merely of aspirations
and much more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and
how far, on the contrary, they were genuinely effective forces in
determining the lives and beliefs of the people. The general tendency of
English historians is to leave the question on one side, while rather
assuming that the first answer is more likely to be true (especially of the
ecclesiastical codes) than the second. Such an assumption is
understandable, for it is not easy to reconcile much of what is said in
and implied by the laws and penitentials with our other information on
Anglo-Saxon society. For all that, these codes probably tell us about a
great deal which really happened. Certainly if the penitentials express
mere aspirations their popularity shows that such aspirations came to be
widely held. Dr Mayr-Harting interestingly draws attention to a
passage in Egbert's Dialogue which at least professes to speak not of
intention, but of fact. 55 Egbert says that from the time of Theodore the
English people practised fasts, vigils, prayers, and the giving of alms
for the full twelve days before Christmas, as if this were prescribed by
law. Not only the clergy in the monasteries but also the laity with their
wives and families would resort to their confessors and 'wash
themselves of carnal concupiscence by tears, community life and alms
in those twelve days' so preparing themselves for the Christmas
communion. This surprising picture is, at the very least, a reminder of
how little we can be sure of about the religious, as about all other,
aspects of the life of the early English.
The safest principle in the study of the conversion of England is one
of doubt, of the acceptance of the widest range of possibilities. To take
two questions touched upon above: we do not know whether England
was in some degree Christianised before 597; we cannot be certain how
elaborated, sophisticated and secure the organisation of kingdoms and
of the Church was by 700. In both instances there is a better case than is
commonly accepted for at least a suspension of disbelief in what may
54
Hadden and Stubbs, Councils, i, 180.
55
appear prima facie the more extravagant possibilities. Two
generalisations, safe because very general, can be made about seventh
century England and its Church. The first is that the success of the
Church was associated with and helped to cause very important
changes in area with which religion has nothing directly to do. Some of
these have already been mentioned. There are others. One of the most
obvious was in which the Church helped, directly or indirectly, to
change the nature of English politics was through the introduction of
bookland, land held by charter. If Mr. Eric John is right (and his case is a
powerful one) in arguing that in early England nobles held land only by
precarious tenure and that perpetual, heritable tenure came in with the
charter, then English noblemen getting charters, by covert means from
about the end of the seventh century and openly from the later eighth,
could have meant a major transformation in the life and relationships of
the English ruling class.56 The conversion could have had very
extensive economic effects. The largest communities of any kind which
we know to have been living in one place in early Anglo-Saxon
England were those inhabiting the twin monasteries of
Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. Bede says that in 716 the brethen of the
two monasteries numbered nearly 600. 7 Our only evidence for the size
of secular communities comes from cemeteries; not even the largest of
these would suggest a population of 300 in one community. The scale
of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow's agricultural activities is suggested by the
fact that the three great manuscripts of the Bible written there in the
time of Abbot Ceolfrith (688 or 9 to 716) would have required the skins
of 1,550 calves.58 Monkwearmouth-Jarrow was an altogether
exceptional monastery, but there were other big ones, and by the end of
the seventh century it is likely that monasteries of all kinds were very
numerous. Thus there is quite a strong possibility that the development
of monasticism brought about major changes in the pattern of
settlement, and that by 700 in much of England the nearest
approximation to a town was a major monastery. We know that certain
new techniques were introduced by the Church: for example, building
in stone and the use of glass windows. Bede provides an instance of the
Church introducing a technique at a more basic level. When Wilfrid
was engaged in converting Sussex in the early 680's he taught the
inhabitants how to catch fish; previously they had only been able to
catch eels, but the bishop showed them how to use eel nets for catching
other kinds offish, with encouraging results.59 It was in the nature of
56
E. John, Land Tenure in Early England (1960), 1-63; cf. F. M. Stenton, Latin Charters
of the Anglo-Saxon Period (1955), 60-62.
57
Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, i, 382.
58
R. L. S. Bruce Mitford, 'The Art of the Codex Amiatinus', Journ. Archaeolog.
Assoc., 3rd ser. xxxii (1969), p 2 of the off-print.
59
H.E. IV, xiii.
the monastic life that men of wide experience, who might rise to
positions of great authority, became involved in manual labour with
which otherwise those of such birth as theirs never sullied their hands.
It may well be supposed that Wilfrid owed his expertise in fishing to
experience gained at Lindisfarne and one is entitled to guess that the
particular case involving him of which we know may be one of many
instances, of which we do not know, of ecclesiastics introducing new
techniques.
The analysis of the apparently Christian cemeteries of the seventh
century had revealed other possible implications of the conversion
which extend beyond religion. The ornaments and objects found in
them are, we are told, very different from those which appear in earlier
cemeteries. The brooches and necklaces are, by and large, of new kinds.
There are differences in weapons, when they appear. Objects of kinds
almost unknown before, for example 'thread-boxes' become fairly
common.60 These transformations might signify no more than a
change in fashion. But it said that not only are the new objects and
styles derived in the first instance from Kent but also that 'for the first
time in the Anglo-Saxon period parallels for our material are not found
in North Germany and Scandinavia but in South Germany,
Switzerland, and more particularly Italy!'.61 The diffusion of the new
style looks as if it was associated with the conversion and it appears
possible that a religion which had much to do with Italy and fashions in
ornament which had much to do with Italy came in at the same time. T.
C. Lethbridge suggested that conversion was accompanied by both
men and women becoming 'much less ostentatious and barbaric in their
dress than they had a century earlier'. He went on to hint that a
transition from Teutonic to classical dress may have accompanied the
conversion.62 He did not press, nor should we, the idea that one of the
first duties or inclinations of a convert was to throw away his trousers
and replace them by something in the nature of a toga, or kilt. But it
does look as if the conversion may have been accompanied by, or have
caused, changes in dress. It could be an expression of that association of
Romanitas with religion which one seems to see in another way in, for
example, the regular buildings of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, much
more like Roman villas than anything which had been built in the north
for nearly three hundred years. 63 The attitude of mind of African and
Asian converts in the nineteenth century who may have found
difficulty (so reflecting something about their mentors) in
distinguishing top hats and the Early English style in architecture from
60
Hyslop, 'Two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries . . .', op. cit., 190-2.
61
Ibid., 191.
62
T. C. Lethbridge, Merlin's Isle (1948), 144-6, cf. p 00 above.
63
R. Cramp, 'Excavations at the Saxon Monastic Sites of Wearmouth and Jarrow: an
Interim Report', Mediev. Archaeolog., xiii (1969), 21-66.
the essentials of the Christian religion, is one which mutatis mutandis
may easily have appeared in seventh century England. Compare the
ruling, in what Miss Hughes regards as a sixth century Irish canon, that
clerics must (in her words) 'conform in three ways to civilised Roman
conditions: by wearing a tunic, shaving their heads, and seeing their
wives go veiled'. A comparable ruling of a Welsh synod requires that
no catholicus should let his hair grow more barbarorum.64
Our second safe generalisation is that England and its Church
contained much diversity. Dr Mayr-Harting lays justified stress on the
variety of the traditions of the Church and on the continuing and
valuable strength of 'localism'. The English Church was full of
contrasts: between Monkwearmouth/Jarrow with its daily masses and
Lindisfarne with its less frequent celebration,65 between the learning of
Bede and the very different learning of Aldhelm,66 between
monasteries where miracles were believed to be regularly performed
and others where they hardly occurred.67 The Church contained
genuinely holy men of very diverse kinds. It came to include men
whose learning was strangely applied. It is hard to believe, in the light
of recent studies revealing the elaborate sophistication of the
inscriptions on the Franks casket, that they are not the work of a cleric.68
What are we to make of the mental world of one who related the
Christian, the classical, and the very barbarously pagan as they are
related on this casket? The Church also came to include some strange
institutions, for example, the 'righteous man' who would perform
penances for others for a consideration.69 The conversion of England
has to be understood in relation to societies almost as complex and to
views and beliefs quite as diverse as those found in later centuries. In
seeking to understand it we should beware (it may well be that in what
is written above I have bewared insufficiently) of taking a striking or
moving instance as a guide to the whole; and we should always be
ready to be surprised.
64
K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (1966), 47-8.
65
66
Ibid., 214-9.
67
Above pp. 41-43.
68
Most recently M. Osborn, 'The Grammar of the Inscription on the Franks Casket,
Right Side', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Ixxiii (1972), 663-71.
&
J. T. McNeill and H. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (1938), 236 (though this
may not be English).
The 'Additional Bibliographical Note' at the end of Chapter 3 applies to this chapter also.
5
Bede's Reges and Principes
Bede dedicated his Ecclesiastical History to a king, and it is in a degree a

mirror for princes. Yet he by no means sought to tell all that he knew
about kings. On the contrary, to the extent that he sought to typify and
to edify he was both discreet and selective. The description of secular
institutions was alien to his intention. His book was written for the
purposes which do not conform to all the needs of our curiosity. So,
often it proves a reticent or an ambiguous witness. To ask of it so
superficially simple a question as 'What is a rex? is not to gain a simple
answer. Bede uses the the word for rulers of widely differing power.
He refers regularly to reges of Northumbria, Mercia, Essex, Wessex,
Sussex, Kent and East Anglia.1 No grander noun is employed for the
great overlords enjoying power over most of Britain. At the other
extreme he mentions reges apparently of lesser status than those of the
major kingdoms. Thus once, but only once, he mentions a king of
Wight.2 Another lesser rex appears in his account of Penda's son Peada,
ruler of the Middle Angles and 'iuvenis optimus et regis nomine et
persona dignissimus'. Most worthy of the title of king Peada may have
been; all the same Bede does not seem too sure about giving it to him.
He does so once, but twice elsewhere Peada is princeps3 Princeps in his
usage is not easy to define; it is not for him an ordinary synonym for
rex, though it can include reges; sometimes it denotes important men
The notes have been kept to a minimum and are by no means fully comprehensive. The
following abbreviations have been used in them.
B. W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols, and index (1885-89).

OH Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1896).
S. P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography
(1968).
Two Chronicles Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle,
2 vols. (Oxford, 1892,1899).
The numbers given in references to B. and S. are those of the charters.
1
Also for those of Bernicia and Deira. For Bede's usages of rex and of other words
discussed below see P. F. Jones, A Concordance to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede
(Cambridge, Mass. 1929) s.v.
2
OH, i, p. 237.
3
OH i, pp. 169, 354.
85
subordinated to kings, but possibly such as had independent authority.4
Bede uses other terms related to, but not synonymous with rex. After
the death of Cenwalh, Wessex was, he says, divided among subreguli.5
In describing Penda's forces at the battle of the Winwaed he first says
they included 'xxx legiones ducibus nobilissimis', but a moment later
calls these duces not nobilissimi but regii.6 It appears that to Bede some
potentates were indubitably reges, while others did not unambiguously
deserve such a description, but nevertheless had something regal about
them.
His vocabulary for kingdoms and peoples is no more clear-cut. For
royal authority he uses imperium and regnum, synonymously, and
sometimes with territorial implications.7 Like others he distinguished
between gens, populus, and natio, but not sharply or always, for he
applies all three to the Mercians.8 Generally he uses natio only for large
ethnic groups and particularly to denote racial origin as in 'de natione
Anglorum'. Conversely populus, when used for a particular people,
almost always indicates that of a single kingdom.9 Gens is the term
Bede uses most commonly, and he uses it indifferently for either a large
ethnic group, e.g. gens Brettonum or for the men of a particular
kingdom, e.g. gens Merciorum. His normal word for what we think of as
a kingdom is provincia: provinda Merciorum etc.; but he also uses it, if
rarely, for lesser divisions: provincia Gyruiorum . . . Meanuarorum . . .
Undalum.10 His normal word for an area less than a provincia (in its
larger sense) is regie. Northumbria and Mercia are made up of regiones.11
Ely is a regio, so too are the lands of the Girvii, Surrey, Loidis,
Incuneningum, and Infeppingum.12 Only once does he use regio for an area
4
See Jones, op. cit., s.v., and esp. OH, i, pp. Ill, 180, 182, 243.
5
OH, i, p. 227.
6
OH, i, p. 178.
7
For the synonymous uses of these words see e.g. OH, i, p. 89 lines 13, 27, cf. pp.
89, 97, 229 with 180, 267 for the equivalence of imperium Anglorum with regnum Anglorum.
Cf. H. Vollrath-Reichelt, Konigsgedanke und Konigtum bei den Angelsachsen (Cologne,
1971), pp. 79-80 .
8
Vollrath-Reichelt, pp. 40-48; for the Mercians OH, i, pp. 125, 170, 171, 180.
9
The slightly aberrant use ofpopuli for the Angles, Saxons and Jutes on their coming
to Britain (OH, i, p. 31) reinforces the impression given by the fact that here only does
he call the South Saxons Meridiani rather than Australes and the West Saxons Occidui
rather than Occidentals that this famous passage came to him from a written source,
possibly a letter. It is likely that variations in Bede's usage are often to be explained
similarly.
10
OH, i, p. 169, 230, 322, 330.
11
OH, i, pp. 158, 302 (regio is used in a probably very general sense in both cases).
12
OH, i, pp. 244, 246, 218, 218, 179, 304, 171. (The usage of early charters is like
Bede's in that it draws no clear line between regio and provincia) thus Kent is mentioned
both as a. provincia in which a regio lies (e.g. B. 254 (S. 128)) and as a regio (B. 291 (S.
1258)); Surrey is both provincia (B. 34 (S. 1165)) and regio (B. 275 (S. 144)). But, as with
Bede (the one reference to regionem Genissorum (p. 87 below) excepted, though a regio may
be within a provincia the converse is never the case.
Bede's Reges and Principes 87
13
which normally he would call provinda: regionem Geuissorum.
While most of the words which he uses for what we think of as a
kingdom, or its people, are also used for larger or smaller entities, a
fairly coherent, if smudged, pattern emerges. In particular, though he
uses gens both for the people of a kingdom and for wider groupings,
and provinda both for a kingdom and for a smaller unit, the provindae
which he regards as having a gens or populus he also mentions as having
a rex. In some contexts he regards the territorial provinda as equivalent
to the non-territorial gens and populus and attributes to the entity which
can indifferently be described by any of these words something like a
national identity. 'Huius industria regis Derorum et Berniciorum
provinciae quae eatenus ab invicem discordabant in unam sunt pacem et
velut unum compaginatae in populum'.14 'Ossa . . . noluerunt . . .
excipere . . . quia de alia provincia ortus fuerat et super eos regnum
acceperat'.15 If the convergences of his usage are suggestive, so too are
its divergences. A kingdom such as Mercia or Wessex is presented as
inhabited by or equivalent to a gens, which is to suggest that its people
were an entity in some way comparable to, say, gens Anglorum. At the
same time such an entity is a provinda, a word also applied to units of
lesser significance. Such ambivalences may indicate more than simply
what was inevitable when the new wine of Germanic circumstances
was poured into the old bottles of a Latin vocabulary which in any case
lacked precision. The messiness and ambiguities of Bede's usage may
reflect something of the world he described.
They hinder us in answering two obvious and plain questions about
the kings and kingdoms of early England: How many? Of what kind?
A number of reges other than those of the 'Heptarchic' kingdoms and
Bernicia and Deira may be collected. Best known are those of the
Hwicce, whose line can be traced from the later seventh century to the
later eighth.16 Bede calls one of these rulers rex,17 this description is also
used in certain charters, but the Hwiccian kings almost always appear in
subordination to those of Mercia, as subreguli, reguli, comites or ministri.
Still, there was a sense that the Hwicce were a distinct people; they had
a provinda and a bishop as well as a rex. The origins of the dynasty are
unknown, but are possibly Northumbrian. That the presence of a rex
for the Isle of Wight in the late seventh century should be known only
from one reference in Bede strengthens the case for supposing there to
have been other reges whom he does not mention at all. One such line,
13
OH, i, p. 238.
14
OH, i, p. 138.
15
OH, i, p. 148.
16
H. P. R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1961), pp.
167-180.
17
OH, i, p. 255.
18
OH, i, p. 237.
that of the reges or subreguli of the Western Hecani (later Magonsaeten),
can be dimly but convincingly traced, almost entirely in late and
doubtful sources, from the mid-seventh century to the mid-eighth,
with authority in Herefordshire and Shropshire. They may have
descended from a son of Penda.19 That Lindsey is called by Bede
provincia and that it had bishops of its own strengthens Stenton's
argument (based largely on an eighth century genealogy) for supposing
it to have had kings.2 We know of one rex of the Middle Angles,
whom Bede regarded as a populus, inhabiting a provincia and entitled to
a bishop of their own, but that is the ambiguous case of Peada and it is a
question whether Middle Anglia was an old entity or not.21 In a charter
of 672 X 674 Frithuwold, 'provinciae Surrianorum subregulus regis
Wlfarii Mercianorum' grants land.22 Surrey's name and size suggest it
to have been an important early unit, though also that it was part of a
larger one. It is more than once mentioned in the Chronicle as if it were
of the same kind as Kent and Sussex.23 This charter is the only evidence
for there having been someone of something like royal status at its
head. One may wonder how many other such areas had such rulers and
whether they belonged to dynasties which had once been independent.
Three other subreguli, we are not told of what, witness the charter.
Special problems are posed by the reges and subreguli of Wessex and
the principes of Mercia. Bede says that after the death of Cenwalh (674)
Wessex was divided among subreguli. A version of the Chronicle states
that Edwin killed five reges in Wessex in 626. In a number of early
charters relating to Wessex appear reges, reguli or subreguli, sometimes
granting land, who were not rulers of Wessex as a whole. Some of these
charters are questionable. Still, as Chadwick said 'unless the authors
had at least a tradition to go on they would hardly have chosen names
which were otherwise unknown and given them titles which were not
19
Finberg, The Early Charters of the West Midlands, op. cit. pp. 217-224.
20
F. M. Stenton, Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 127-37. It
is curious that the only provinciae for which Bede uses the forms 'provincia Lindissi',
'provincia Cantiae', with a genitive singular rather than a plural, as in e.g. provincia
Nordanhymbrorum, are the only two whose names are known to go back to Romano-
British past, in the sense of deriving from names certainly in use in Roman Britain.
21
W. Davies, 'Middle Anglia and the Middle Angles', Midland History 2 (1973-4),
pp. 18-20 (cf. H. E. Walker, 'Bede and the Gewissae', Cambridge Historical Journal 12
(1956), pp. 176-7) argues that Middle Anglia is highly unlikely to have been an entity
existing before Peada had authority there. Her arguments depend on the assumption that
princeps and ealdorman are words signifying royal officers and no more, which is not
certain (cf. pp. 85-86 above and pp. 89, 91 below); on the silence of the sources on
anything about the Middle Angles other than Peada's ruling them, which is not
conclusive (cf. p. 90 below); and on the fact that in the 'Tribal Hidage' the Middle
Anglian area is divided among several 'peoples'; this is indeed suggestive, but could mean
no more than that after Peada's time Middle Anglia was divided up.
22
B. 34 (S. 1165).
23
E.g. Two Chronicles . . . i, pp. 43, 61.
Bede's Reges and Prindpes 89
used in Wessex after the eighth century'. His argument that it was
probably normal for this kingdom to be divided among subreguli under
a 'main king' and that these were, or often were, identical with the
ealdormen of Ine's laws is powerful.
We meet in Bede one princeps from the area of Mercian authority,
Tonberct, 'princeps. . . Australium Gyruiorum. 25 Thereto or provincia
of the Southern Gyrvii, was not large - 600 hides - but Tonberct was a
man of high status, for he married a daughter of the king of the East
Angles (the only marriage Bede records of the offspring of one rex to
someone who was not the offspring of another). Other Mercian prindpes
are met in charters, as witnesses, and sometimes more revealingly. In
memoranda of between 675 and shortly before 691 'Friduricus principus
Aedilridi regis' is recorded as granting lands to Medeshamstede.2 In
ninth century charters prindpes appear as having rights over extensive
lands coordinate with, but inferior to, those of the king. In 836 when
Wiglaf of Mercia gave extensive exemptions to a monastery including
that from 'pastus regis et principum' two ealdormen (ealdorman is the
normal Old English equivalent of'princeps) were compensated, one with
land, the other with gold.27 In 848, when Beortwulf of Mercia granted
liberties to Breedon, Humberht, princeps, agreed that it should be free
from 'omnibus causis . . . quae mihi aut principibus Tonsetorum
unquam ante ea pertinebant'. (The Tomsaetan, whether truly a people or
rather an administrative district is for discussion, extended from
Leicestershire to near Birmingham.28) One must wonder whether
Friduricus could not have appeared in other sources, if we had them, as
subregulus or even rex, and whether the coordinate rights of king and
ealdorman revealed in the ninth-century documents derive from delega-
tion, or from subordination. And what were the prindpes Tonsetoruml
There is a wide range of possibilities, from their having once been an inde-
pendent dynasty, to their having been a series of Mercian functionaries.
In such musings it is essential to take note of that astonishing
document, the 'Tribal Hidage'. Of unknown, but not improbably
seventh or eighth century date, this assigns hidages to the 'Heptarchic'
kingdoms south of the Humber, but also to to a remarkable number of
what historians call 'peoples' with assessments varying from 300 to
7,000 hides. A recent study of the 'Hidage' by Dr Davies has suggested
that sixth-century England was ruled by kings only in part, the
remainder being inhabited by kingless 'peoples'; and that the only truly
24
H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 282-
90 (p. 286 for the quotation). See also P. H. Sawyer. From Roman Britain to Norman
England (1978), pp. 45-49, for an important account of this and related matters.
&
OH, i, p. 243.
26
B. 841, 842 (S. 1803, 1805).
27
B. 416 (S. 190).
28
B. 454 (S. 197); Stenton, Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England, op. cit. p. 184 n. 3.
independent dynasties there are likely to have been (South of the
Humber) are those of the 'Heptarchy', other reges, subreguli etc., known
or suspected, being subordinates appointed by Mercian rulers to
administer 'peoples', or groups thereof who fell under their control
from the seventh century.29
Among the many merits of Dr Davies's work courage is not the least;
to say that her hypotheses are questionable is to say little more than that
they are an attempt to make sense of the 'Tribal Hidage'. But
questionable they are. While it is likely that our sources are good enough
to permit reasonable certainty as to which were the major dynasties in the
seventh century, it does not follow that these alone were important
earlier. How lost to us is the history of nearly two centuries after the
Adventus is illustrated by the Chronicle's annal for 597: 'Ceolwulf began to
reign . . . and he continually contended against the English, or the
Britons, or the Picts, or the Scots'.30 That is all we know of Ceolwulf s
extensive contentions. To argue against there having been independent,
even important, dynasties in Lindsey, Middle Anglia or elsewhere on the
ground that we have no record of such importance is to argue, not from
the silence of sources, but from their absence. The dynasties prominent
in the seventh century may have often elbowed their way to greatness in
recent generations; damnatio memoriae may well have been the fate of
those they displaced. An instructive, though not completely parallel,
instance is that of Elmet. Were we dependent on sources of English
origin we should have no idea that a British dynasty survived there into
the seventh century. If the Elmed saetna of the Hidage had once had kings
of their own, why should not others of its 'peoples' have done so? It
could have been that in the invasion period, and for long afterwards,
many Anglo-Saxons lived outside the authority of any dynasty whom a
Latin author would have called reges or principes. Certainly the
governmental arrangements of the Old Saxons as reported by Bede do
not include royal rule. In any case we know so little about Anglo-Saxon
society in Germany or in England that many possibilities must be
admitted. But even if reges did not control the whole of early England it is
likely that there had once been more dynasties than survived to be heard
of in the seventh century; and possible that at the head of many of the
'peoples' of the 'Tribal Hidage' were subordinated subreguli or principes
whose ancestors had known more independence.
The rulers of the England Bede described may be roughly divided
into three groups, which are not, however, completely separable from
one another, but merge into a continuum. First great overlords such as
the seven whom he lists in Book II, chapter ix, with others such as
29
W. Davies and H. Vierck, 'The Contexts of the Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates
and Settlement Patterns', Fruhmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974), pp. 224-93, esp. 236-41.
30
Two Chronicles, i, p. 20.
Penda, Wulfhere and Aethelbald. These had many rulers subordinated
to them, including some whom Bede had no doubt about calling reges.
Second, reges of major kingdoms. Third a class, probably a large class,
of lesser potentates for whom it is not easy to find a single or
unambiguous term, because contemporaries could not find one. Bede's
hesitation on whether to call Peada rex or princeps and his use of such an
ambiguous expression as duces regii are characteristic of contemporary
difficulties in finding a word for such men. It would have been possible
in the eighth century for the same man to have been described by
different writers and in different contexts as rex, subregulus, princeps,
dux, praefectus and comes.31 In Old English he would probably have
generally been called ealdorman, a term commonly taken to imply a
functionary, but one whose poetic use suggests that in this period it was
also associated with kingship; alternatively he might sometimes have
been called cyning.32 What these men had in common was an authority
over an at least fairly extensive area, subordination or inferiority to
greater reges, and something about their status and functions which
made them in some ways similar to reges and ensured that it was
impossible to draw a clear distinction between them and reges. They
were probably of diverse origins. Some were in the position of Peada,
close relatives of a major king who had been given an area to rule.
There may have been little difference between such and some of those
who shared kingdoms such as Kent and Essex where division of the
kingdom sometimes took place, if, as is likely, one of the beneficiaries
of such a division generally had a position superior to the others. Some
may have been the descendants of cadets established as Peada was.
Some may have been the heirs of formerly independent dynasties.
Some may have been noblemen rewarded by territorial authority. The
importance of their areas of authority varied greatly; from the 7,000
hides of that of the reges or subreguli of the Hwicce to the 600 of the
principes of the South Gyrvii. (Though it is worth remembering that
Bede could write of a rex of Wight, which is only assessed at 600 hides
in the Tribal Hidage; had his information on Tonberct come from a
different source we might have heard of him as rex.) It is a question
how much of England was divided up among such men. It is likely that
Wessex was and that there were far more principes or subreguli in Mercia
than we hear of. Perhaps each of the 'peoples' of the 'Tribal Hidage' had
such a potentate over it.
This was a world in which there were hierarchies of kings and
relativities of kingliness and in this may have been not too unlike that of
contemporary Ireland. Those higher up the scale were concerned to
depress the status of those lower down. A great rex such as Wulfhere
31
Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, op. cit. pp. 282-90.
32
Ibid, pp. 286, 280.
had other reges subordinated to him, and they in turn could have men of
something like royal status subordinated to them. Thus Wulfhere had
authority over Ethelwalh of Sussex, and if, when he gave Ethelwalh the
provinda of Wight, it had a rex, as a few years later it did, then a triple
hierarchy of reges was established. 3 Greater kings were concerned to
emphasise the inferior status of those below them. A ruler of the
Hwicce might be rex or subregulus of his own people; to his Mercian
overlord he was meus subregulus, or comes, or minister.2'4 Offa was
concerned to reduce other kings south of the Humber to the status of
subreguli, men whose charters had to be confirmed.35 At a lower level
on the scale the rulers both of Mercia and of Wessex were in the eighth
century probably trying to ensure that their subreguli, principes, or
ealdormen became more like functionaries and less like subordinated
rulers. A successful ruler had to gather and hold the allegiance of as
many reges, subreguli, principes, duces regii as he could. He might be well
advised to share his gains by granting something like royal status and
power to members of his family. But he also had to ensure that
potentates subordinated to him had as little of the rex and as much of
the comes about them as possible. In such a world it was not easy to
draw clear distinctions. Bede's ambivalences in the use of rex and
related words probably reflect his feeling that while there was a
distinction between reges and their immediate inferiors, it was not easy
to see where to draw it.
Many kings and princes rose and fell in the struggle for power in the
England Bede described. In considering the determinants of that
struggle it is helpful to set beside what Bede tells us other sources and in
the hope that they may give to details and episodes in his story
significance which is less apparent when they are seen in the context of
Bede's vision of the past, one partly dominated and so in a measure
distorted by his purposes. Beowulf is such a source. One cannot be
certain of its date; it may be considerably later than the eighth century
which the balance of supposition has generally favoured.3 Still, it may
take us nearer to the thoughts and motives of men in power than do
works written for religious purposes.
In the political world of the poem four things stand out. The
importance of the king's noble retinue, whose origins may lie in
kingdoms other than his own; an indissoluble connection between gold
and success; the store set by good weapons which are regarded as
treasure; the endless insecurity associated with feud. A king lives
33
OH, i, pp. 230, 237.
34
A. H. Smith, 'The Hwicce', in Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honour of F. P.
Maooun (1965), p. 58.
3§
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed. Oxford, 1970), pp. 206-12.
36
E.g. E. John 'Beowulf and the Margins of Literacy', Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library, 56 (1974), pp. 389-91, and see p. 48 above.
surrounded by noble warriors who feast with him, sleep in his hall by
night, fight for him and are ready (or anyway were most sincerely
hoped to be ready) to die for him. Their number and loyalty were
crucial for royal power. As king Hrothgar prospered, so did the
number of his young retainers increase. A king's followers could come
from kingdoms other than his own, as Beowulf came from Geatland
to Denmark. Adventure or the hope of profit bring some; the harsher
compulsions of exile others. To secure followers and power, treasure is
essential. Kingship and treasure-giving go hand in hand. Kings are
'treasure-guardians', 'ring-givers', 'gold friends'. A good king gives:
Hrothgar was 'the best of earthly kings . . . the best of those who
bestowed gold'.37 A bad king 'begins to hoard his treasures, never parts
with gold rings'.38 Treasure rewards service, creates the expectation of
loyalty, and is the outward sign of honour. The gift of a splendid sword
ensures that the recipient 'was honoured on the mead-bench that much
the more'.39 The social and emotional significance of gold-giving and
gold-wearing is complex and deep; and it was not for nothing that
Beowulf died to win a treasure hoard. With the poet's interest in
treasure goes a similar interest in weapons. They are described in detail
and with love. Gifts of armour and of pattern-welded swords are
treated on the same footing as treasures. All the kings and kingdoms
mentioned in the poem ultimately come to grief and the poet is at pains
to remind his audience of this. In short this world is one in which it is
all-important for a king to give treasure, which includes arms. If he has
treasure and is successful in war (these things feed one another) he can
attract followers from other kingdoms, because noblemen are often on
the move through hunger for reward or the necessities of exile. To keep
giving he has to keep taking, and so adds feud to feud. No kingdom or
king can hope for long success. When a great king grows ill or old or
mean there are always enemies waiting at home and abroad. They seize
their advantage and other kings rise, gaining the treasure, the men, and
the glory.
This picture is a construct; from a work of fiction. But its elements
were important in Bede's England. A retinue of noble warriors was
necessary to a king and could be recruited from kingdoms other than
his own. Oswine of Deira was, Bede says, so handsome, so jovial, so
civil and (last, but doubtless not least) so generous that noblemen came
to his service from almost every provincial When adequate land was
not available to reward young Northumbrian noblemen they went to
serve overseas. It was probably common, or normal, for a nobleman to
37
Ed. F. Klaebur (3rd ed. Boston, 1950) lines 1684-6. The transition here and below
is that of K. Crossley-Holland (Cambridge, 1968).
38
Lines 1749-51.
39
Lines 1900-1903.
40
OH, i, pp. 155-6.
go to fight for a king or his own hand. Our best example is that of
Guthlac. When he was about fifteen 'a noble love of command began to
glow . . . he gave himself up to arms . . . laid waste the towns and
dwellings, the villages and fortresses of his enemies . . . brought
together comrades diversarum gentium and collected vast booty'.41 It is
important that his retinue was of diverse peoples and that (as we are
told elsewhere) he was for some time in exile among the Britons.42
Exiles are omnipresent in this period. Many kings spent part of their
lives as exiles: for example, Edwin, Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswy and
Aldfrith of Northumbria; Sigbert of East Anglia; Cenwalh and
Caedwalla of Wessex; Aethelbald of Mercia. Naturally we hear most of
those exiles who ultimately came to power. There were others. Some
occur in Eddius's life of Wilfrid's 'nobiles quidam exules cum exercitu
causa iniuriae suae spoliantes' burned down the monastery of Oundle.43
Exile was inevitably important in a society to which feud was intrinsic.
It is of feuds in and between royal houses of which most is known and it
may be that the openness of successions to kingdoms made royal exiles
particularly common. It is significant that some of these, for example
Caedwalla of Wessex and Aethelbald of Mercia, were not closely
related to the kings whom ultimately they succeeded. Many kings must
have had the exiled enemies of other kings in their service; and a king's
enemies must often have been his relations.
Treasures performed much the same social role in early England that
they did in Beowulf. Thanks above all to Sutton Hoo we know what the
treasures of the day were like and it is the easier to understand how men
could live and die for them. Hrothgar settled a feud by giving many
valuable old treasures; Oswy sought to buy off Penda by offering
ornamenta regia.44 A passage in one manuscript of the Penitential of
Theodore deals with a man who has entered the church and to whom a
king has given some rich thing; if the king is alive, the man must return
it. This reflects a feeling, almost a system, apparent in Beowulf. If you
have a sword or a treasure your lord gave you, that binds you to him.
The weapons surviving from early England enable us to see why the
best of them should have been treated as treasures. Armour survives
very rarely; pattern-welded swords, which were superior to others, are
by no means common. Such equipment was probably confined to the
great and their beneficiaries and may well have sufficed to give great
advantages in battle. If there were strong social distinctions in military
41
Felix's Life of Guthlac, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956), p. 80.
42
Ibid, p. 110.
43
Eddius Stephanus, Het Leven van Sint Wilfrid, ed. H. Moonen ('S-Hertogenbosch,
1946), p. 210 (cap. 67).
44
OH, i, p. 177.
45
Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, iii
(Oxford, 1871), p. 203 n. 15. (This canon does not necessarily derive from England.)
usefulness then the significance of the movement of armed noblemen
from one king's service to another's was enhanced.
If in many violent ways Bede's kings and kingdoms were divided,
many strands linked them together. Naturally the most important of
these was marriage. Kings commonly married wives from other royal
houses. Queens were very important for good or ill. A queen brought
to her new home a household from her old and maintained contact with
her family. When Wilfrid first sought to go to Rome. Eanfled, queen of
Northumbria, helped him by sending to her relative Eorconberht, king
of Kent.46 Later he was less successful with queens. The hostility of
lormenburh, Egfrith of Northumbria's queen, was important in driving
him into exile. He later fled to Mercia, but there the queen was Egfrith's
sister, and had him driven out. Next he went to Wessex, but, bad luck,
its queen was lormenburgh's sister and out he was driven again.47 His
adventures show how royal families were linked to one another by
blood as well as divided by feud. There were other connections. Kings
sent emissaries to one another; the West Saxon ambassador who sought
to murder Edwin must have had an atypical purpose.48 A ninth-century
Mercian charter makes regular provision for emissaries coming from
Wessex, Northumbria or overseas.49 Many kings must, as exiles, have
experienced kingdoms other than their own. Lesser rulers visited the
courts of greater and served in their armies. Bede's account of Sigbert
of Essex '. . . amicus eiusdem Osuiu regis, qui, cum frequenter ad eum
in provinciam Nordanhymbrorum veniret . . .' is a reminder that kings
could be friends.50. The great men of England were involved with one
another not only by war but also by peaceful connections. Their society
and customs, in more peaceful as well as in more violent aspects, were
such as naturally to multiply contacts not only between English rulers,
but also theirs with others, elsewhere in the island, in Gaul, and in
Ireland. It was this which did much to determine the nature and success
of the conversion to Christianity.
Underlying the shifting hierarchy of reges and prindpes, their wars
and their peaces, lay systems for the exploitation and government of
lands and men. The early laws of Kent and Wessex appear to show, so
far as laws can, effective royal power and considerable complexity in its
exercise. Recent work has emphasised and extended the evidence for
comparable regularities in the division and organisation of land. The
essence of the argument is that the system of lordship and local
government over much, possibly all of early England resembled, and at
46
Eddius, op. cit. pp. 66-68 (cap. 3).
47
Ibid. pp. 108, pp. 140-42 (caps. 24, 40).
48
OH, i, pp. 98-99.
49
B. 454 (S. 197). The authenticity of this charter has been disputed. It is hard to
imagine a motive for forgery of the passage in question.
50
OH, i, p. 171.
least in wide areas, was connected with that of early Wales. The main
unit in such a system was an area of varying but substantial size (say,
not less than a hundred square miles) centred on a royal vill. To this vill
the settlements within its area owed dues and services of some
complexity, including those intended to provide for the ruler and his
court on his regular tours, and to maintain his men, horses and dogs on
other occasions. The area centred on the royal vill would often or
always have common grazing. The subordinate settlements could vary
in the nature of their obligations. There is no doubt that such a system
prevailed in early Kent and in much of Northumbria. Elsewhere the
evidence is less strong, but in many areas highly suggestive. Setting on
one side questions of origin, it is reasonably certain that in much at least
of early England the organisation of dues and services for the ruler was
systematic, on schemes which methodically integrated settlements to
their respective royal vills.51 The evidence of charters from the late
seventh century on supports such a conclusion; for they strongly
suggest that every settlement had an assessment in hides, and it looks as
if these hidages related to round sum assessments for larger units
centred on royal vills.
Bede is not concerned with such matters. But to bear them in mind is
to attach a significance to some of what he says which might otherwise
be missed. For example, he tells how Oswy, in gratitude for victory,
gave 'XII possessiunculi terrarum', six in Bernicia and six in Deira. The
diminutive has been suggested to imply disparagement. It is far more
likely that posessiunculi means component settlements, in distinction
from villae or vici meaning estate centres, generally royal; and that Bede
means that Oswy gave away twelve such settlements. 2 Or consider the
memorable incident of Oswine's giving Aidan a horse, which the saint
handed on to a beggar. It was equum regium and royally caparisoned.
Oswine was cross; he had, he said, many other horses, viliores and so
more suited for charitable purposes.53 This glimpse of the royal stables
is a reminder of the importance of horses in society and for the exercise
of power. The great distances at which campaigns were fought suggest
that armies rode to battle. Bishops rode round their dioceses; Chad was
made to do so; and we meet John of Hexham's entourage racing one
another on horses.54 In some of the rare early charters which provide
details of services owed from estates, the duty of maintaining horses is
51
W. Rees. 'Survivals of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England', inj. R. R.
Tolkein and others, Angles and Saxons (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 148-68; G. W. S. Barrow,
The Kingdom of the Scots (1973), pp. 9-17; G. R. J. Jones, 'Multiple Estates and Early
Settlement', in English Medieval Settlement, ed. P. H. Sawyer (1979),m pp. 9-34.
52
J. Campbell, 'Bede's Words for Places', below, Chapter 6.
53
OH, i, p. 156.
54
OH, i, pp. 206, 289-91.
35
mentioned. Here is a point at which the long distance raids Bede
mentions and the fluid violent world of Beowulf mett the investigations
of those who concern themselves with renders and grazing rights. The
great needed horses; that horses needed to be fed was one of the reasons
why land was coveted as much as gold. A similarly suggestive passage
in Eddius is that in which he describes Egfrith of Northumbria, with
his queen, going round what sounds like the whole kingdom, or a large
part of it, gaundentes et epulantes, rejoicing and feasting. 6 The medieval
Welsh system included gwestfa, the obligation to entertain the king and
his court when they came round twice a year.57 Egfrith may well have
been exercising such a right. It is likely that it is that which is sometimes
mentioned in charters as pastum regis or convivium regis. That at least in
the West Midlands it corresponded to gwestfa is indicated by a charter in
which Offa let the beneficiary off pastiones for three years, and added,
'id est vi convivia'.58 References in the early sources to kings dining
with subjects may relate not to socialising, but to the exercise of rights.
If there was much which was chaotic in early England there was also
much which was orderly. The absorption of one kingdom by another,
the collection of tribute, the regulation of subordinated powers, would
all have been simplified if all or most of the lands for control or
supremacy over which reges struggled were organised on similar, and
orderly, systems.
These struggles early led to the dominance of a handful of dynasties
and in the end to that of one. One of the problems which faced those
which were rising and successful was that of defining their status in
such a way as to mark it off from that of the, probably numerous, lesser
rulers who had something royal about them. It was a world in which
one of the questions which most needed answering was, 'What is a
king?'. Bede's history was teaching by examples the answer to a
different, if related question, 'What is a Christian king?'. But he gives
not so much one answer as two, offering two types of Christian
kingship. One is that of Oswald, christianissimus, instrumental in the
conversion of his people, victoriosissimus, rewarded by God with great
conquests, miranda sanctitatis, though defeated and slain, triumphant
in miracles.59 This almost implies the view that kingship is a divinely
appointed office; and Bede does indeed say, in the preface to the
Ecclesiastical History, that kings are appointed by God to rule. But that
is the only place where he says it, though as the author of a commentary
55
B. 370, 443, 450, 454 (S. 186, 1271, 198, 197). The first of these relates to Kent; the
others to Mercia. The authenticity of the last two has been questioned. All are ninth
century; but it is probable that what comes to light here has prevailed earlier.
56
Eddius, op. cit. p. 138 (cap. 39).
57
Rees, op. cit. p. 153.
58
B. 241 (S. 1257).
59
OH, i, pp. 139, 89, 127, 144, 153.
on Samuel he had the opportunity to do so elsewhere.60 His work may
have come to play a part in the development of the ideology of
Carolingian kingship, but he was not the Alcuin of the
Northumberland dynasty. The other model he presents is not that of a
king appointed by God to rule, but of a king abandoning rule for God,
as several kings of his generation did. When he describes how one of
these, Coenred of Mercia, abdicated to become a monk at Rome, Bede
says that he reigned most nobly, but much more nobly abandoned the
sceptre of rule.61 This is of course a cliche of hagiography. Still,
commonplaces often express the deepest convictions. Bede was clearly
aware of the archetypal Christian dilemma about secular powers,
whether they should be regarded as divinely appointed for divine
purposes, or rather as parts, if necessary parts, of an essentially sinful
world which Christians should flee. I suspect that, if Bede, in thinking
about great good kings long dead could feel about kingship rather as
Alcuin and Aquinas were to do, he was led nearer to an Augustinian
position in considering the kings of his own day. He knew too much
about them.
60
Vollrath-Reichelt, op. cit. pp. 21-29.
61
OH, i, p. 321.
Significant contributions to themes touched on in this paper and which have appeared
since it was written are: W. Davies, 'Die angelsachsischen Konigreiche in England' in
Sachsen und Angelsachsen, ed. C. Ahrens (catalogue of an exhibition held in the Helms-
Museum, Hamburg, Hamburg, 1978), pp. 85-96; P. Wormald, 'Bede, the Bretwaldas
and the origins of the Gens Auglorum' in Ideal and Reality in Prankish and Anglo-Saxon
Society (see p. 48 above), pp. 99-129; Clare Stancliffe, 'Kings who Opted Out', Ibid.,
pp. 154-76; B. A. E. Yorke, 'The Vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon Lordship', Anglo-Saxon
Studies in Archaeology and History, ii (B. A.R. British Series 92,1981), pp. 171-200 and A. T.
Thacker, 'Some Terms for Noblemen in Anglo-Saxon England', Ibid. pp. 201-236.
6
Bede's Words for Places
It is possible that something can be found out about settlements in early

England by considering the words used by contemporaries to indicate
them. The obvious man with whom to begin is Bede. What follows is
based on an analysis of words he uses for places in the Ecclesiastical
History, Lives of the Abbots and prose Life ofCuthbert} Passages in which
he is known to have been using the words of another have been
excluded.
The words which Bede uses most frequently for important places are
civitas and urbs. Granted that there are four places for which he employs
both words it could be deduced that, like Isidore of Seville or Gregory
of Tours, he regarded them as representing different aspects of the same
thing, or as largely synonymous (Lindsay ed. 1911, xv, i; xv, ii, esp. 1;
Dalton 1927, p. 159). Closer examination shows that this was not so.
Bede refers to eighteen places in Britain as civitates. (For details see the
Appendix.) It is his normal term for Canterbury and London (each
called civitas far more frequently than urbs} and the only one he uses for
Cambridge, Carlisle, Chester, Dorchester, Lincoln, Richborough,
Rochester, Verulamium, York and Winchester (except that Cambridge
is once civitatula). These were all places of at least modest consequence
under the Romans. His remaining eight civitates are a mixed bag. Four
are places at which a monastery was founded and which had vernacular
names terminating in caestir. Ythancaestir, Kaelcacaestir, Tiouulfingcaestir
and Tunnacaestir. The first of these was the Saxon Shore fort ofOthona,
the second the Roman Calcaria; the other two are unidentified. Of the
remaining places Dommoc is hard to characterise, because it is
unidentified. It may have been a place of some Roman importance and/
or have had a name in caestir.2 It is likely that Bede used civitas for
Tilbury only because he was led into so doing by the construction of
the sentence in which he refers to it.3 Thus there are only two places
1
Full references to all works cited can be found at the end of the article. General
statements below apply to these works only. Plummer ed. 1896, I is hereafter
abbreviated as OH. Extensive use has been made of Jones 1929. Unreferenced
statements below about Bede's use of words are based on this concordance.
2
The Old English Bede in calling the place Dommucceastre (Miller ed. 1890, I, p. 142)
may simply be translating Bede's civitas by the suffix, but cf. Bede's treatment of
Dorchester which he once calls Dorcic and once Doriaaestrae (OH, pp. 139, 254).
3
'. . . maxima in civitate quae lingua Saxonum Ythancaestir appellatur sed in ilia
quae Tilaburg cognominatur' (OH, p. 173).
99
which he advisedly calls civitas and which are known neither to have
been places of Roman significance nor to have had names in caestir:
Alcluith and Bamburgh. These two he more often calls urbs (pp. 116-17
below).
The British places which Bede calls urbes number eight. They may be
placed in three categories. Two were British: Alcluith (almost certainly
Dumbarton) and Giudi Urbs (possibly Stirling, Jackson 1963, p. 57).
Five were Anglo-Saxon places which had names terminating in burg:
Bamburgh, Canterbury, Cnobheresburg, Malmesbury and Colodaesburg.
London, called urbs on one occasion, is in a category of its own, though
Canterbury resembles it in being more generally termed civitas. The
other places named above are invariably called urbs, with the exceptions
of Alcluith and Bamburgh.
It is important to observe how numerous are the places which Bede
does not call either civitas or urbs. He does not call a place civitas simply
because it was the seat of a bishop. Lindisfarne, Hexham, Lichfield and
Selsey are not so termed. Lichfield, for example, is simply locus OH, p.
207) and locus seems to be for Bede an exclusive term to the extent that
he does not use it for civitates or urbes. Although he names a
considerable number of places at which monasteries were founded he
never describes them as either civitas or urbs unless their vernacular
names terminated in caestir or burg respectively.
It seems clear that the distinction between civitates and urbes in Bede's
usage was closely connected with the distinction, whatever it may have
been, in contemporary vernacular usage between caestir and burg. A
high proportion of the English places which he calls civitas had
vernacular names in caestir;4 a high proportion of those which he calls
urbs had names in burg. The meaning of caestir and burg has attracted
considerable attention from students of place-names. Professor A. H.
Smith concludes that in literary sources caestir means 'a large town, a
city' with higher status than a burg; that in place-names it was 'clearly
used to describe important Roman towns and cities' but also,
particularly in the North 'used of any ancient fortification or remains of
them whether Roman or British'. So in his view the main senses of
caestir in place-names are 'a (Roman) city or town or the remains of an
ancient fortification (or what was thought to be such)'. Burg has as its
primary meaning 'fortification, fortified place'; and is used in place-
names to denote 'ancient earthworks, Roman stations or camps,
Anglo-Saxon fortifications, fortified towns and (later) towns' (Smith
1956, 1, pp. 58-62, 85-87).
It is tempting to simplify, indeed curtail, discussion by assuming that
4
That the Old English translator of the Ecclesiastical History almost always calls York
and London Eorforwicceastre and Lundenceastre even when Bede does not use civitas
suggests that these towns are among them.
Bede's Words for Places 101
Bede's use of civitas and urbs was largely determined by whether the
vernacular name for the place concerned terminated in caestir or burg and
that the vernacular connotations of these terminations were sufficiently
overlapping greatly to reduce the meaningfulness of Bede's apparent
distinction. It is true that Bede may generally have worked on the
principal that civitas was the Latin for caestir and urbs the Latin for burg
and have rendered the names of places accordingly and mechanically, as
he does, for example, when he writes 'Cnobheresburg id est urbs
Cnobheri' (OH, p. 164; contrast Eddius's usage p. 104 below). But in at
least one important instance he did not act in this way, for he almost
always calls Canterbury, with a name in burg, civitas (though the town
may just possibly have an alternative name in caestir5}. Furthermore the
question remains as to whether in the vernacular usage of his day there
was a sharper distinction between caestir and burg than appears when the
place-name usage of many later centuries is added to complicate and
blur the picture. That is to say, it is likely that Bede, rather than using
two partly synonymous Latin words to translate two partly
synonymous Anglo-Saxon words, was distinguising carefully between
caestir and burg because they had distinct meanings for him?
All the identifiable places which Bede calls, or usually calls, civitas
had a significant Roman past. This is true not only of the places with
vernacular names in caestir but also of Canterbury, Carlisle and Lincoln
which probably did not have such names. None of the identifiable
places which Bede calls, or usually calls, urbs is known to have had a
significant Roman past. There is one inconsiderable exception: there
was probably a Roman signal station at Bamburgh. If it is true that
Cnobheresburg was the Saxon Shore fort at Burgh Castle, Suffolk, there
is a major one also. But this identification, though almost universally
accepted, seems to rest on nothing earlier or more substantial than a
guess of Camden's.6 That Bamburgh, Alcluith and Giudi Urbs are urbes
and that the primary force of burg has to do with fortification strongly
5
The name as recorded from the mid-eighth century is Cantawarbuvg or the like
(Ekwall 1960, s.v.). There is one exception. In a twelfth-century interpolation,
translating a passage of Bede's, into the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Canterbury appears as Donvit ceastre (Earle and Plummer ed. 1892, 1896, I, p. 20).
Whether this form (obviously connected with Doruvernis) is ancient I cannot judge. It
was certainly possible for an Anglo-Saxon place to have alternative and very different
names, as Bath did (ibid., I, p. 118; II, p. 168).
6
The place is described as castrum. (OH, p. 164.) This word is not part of Bede's
ordinary vocabulary for places (below p. 104) and is here taken from Vita Prima Fursei
(Krusch, ed 1902, p. 437). It is sometimes taken to mean 'Roman camp' (e.g. Cramp
1976, p. 212) but it is a large assumption that the usage of the author of the Vita was so
specific. On the arguments above the name Cnobheresburg suggests a non-Roman site.
Saxon, possibly monastic, remains have been found at Burgh Castle (ibid., pp. 212-15).
They do not suffice to prove the identification with Cnobheresburg; and could as well
serve to claim for Burgh Castle a place in the East Anglian game of musical sedes
episopales. There is a Flixton conveniently to hand.
suggests that what distinguished a place whose name ended in burg or
which Bede called urbs was that it was fortified. It seems that there was
a significant difference between civitas and urbs for Bede. One was a
Roman place (Psignificant, Pfortified), the other a fortified place, not of
Roman origin. It is true that he was probably often dependent on what
a vernacular name told him about the nature of a place. But it appears
likely that he was right in taking it that the vernacular distinction
between caestir and burg was not one without a difference.
If so, some explanation must be offered for the awkward fact that
Bede sometimes used urbs for a place he normally called civitas and
sometimes civitas for a place he normally called urbs. In the first
category are two references to Canterbury and one to London. In the
Canterbury instances urbs is used in a fairly general sense and not in
conjunction with the name of the place ('in urbe regis sedem
episcopatus acceperit', Ventus . . . urbi incendia sparserat', OH, pp.
46, 94). In the second instance urbs could have slipped in from a letter
from such an informant as Albinus, but the first comes in a chapter
heading. The reference to London as urbs comes in close conjuction
with the place-name (urbis Lundoniae . . . episcopo, OH, p. 226). This
could have come from a letter to Bede (OH, p. 6). It is just possible that
Bede's use of urbs for Canterbury and London but for no other former
Roman towns in England reflects their importance. They are the only
places which he calls metropolis. While his normal word for a Roman
town on the Continent is civitas, he generally uses urbs for Rome, Con-
stantinople and Jerusalem, but only for them.7Thus in the one instance
where urbs is almost certainly his own choice of word for a place he
normally calls civitas he may be thinking of the metropolis of Canterbury
as an urbs regia in the sense in which Constantinople was such and
Cologne say, was not.
Rather more difficult is his use of civitas for Bamburgh and Alcluith.
There is small justification for supposing that his choice of words here
is other than his own. However, on both the occasions he uses civitas
for Bamburgh he calls it regia civitas with no other identification. So it
looks as if he is using civitas here for a particular important kind of urbs,
the main royal fortress. The same could well apply to Alcluith. To the
extent that Bede's aberrant uses of urbs and civitas are not to be
explained by his using the words of another the repellently paradoxical
suggestion that an urbs is a capital civitas and a civitas a capital urbs is
therefore offered. However such divergencies from the normal pattern
of Bede's usage are to be explained there is no doubt that there is such a
pattern and that he does not use civitas and urbs indifferently.
It is of some interest to compare Bede's usage with that of the Old
7
OH, pp. 86, 88, 100, 104, 240, 327 (Rome); 75, twice as urbs regia (Constantinople);
317 (Jerusalem); 34, 48, 141, 194, 301 (other towns as civitates).
English translation of the Ecclesiastical History made in the last decade of
the ninth century. In this ceastre is the almost invariable translation of
civitas. It is commonly put at the end of the name, e.g. in civitate
Lundoniae is rendered in Lundenceastre. Urbs is translated burg.
Exceptions are few. On the sole occasion on which Bede calls London
urbs the translator (who is not, however, here following the Latin
closely) calls the city Lundenceastre (Miller ed. 1890, 1, p. 294). The
translator's most interesting difficulties are in regard to Canterbury. He
sometimes translates, e.g. in civitate Doruuernensi as Cantwara byrig
(ibid., pp. 60, 478) but he also uses ceaster Cantwara burge for civitas
Doruuernenesis (ibid., pp. 118, 310). On occasion when Bede is referring
to the city of Canterbury but not by name the translator uses ceastre
(ibid., p. 90) but elsewhere byrg (ibid., pp. 60, 90). That such variations
occur only in relation to the one place with a vernacular name in burg
which Bede habitually calls civitas is highly suggestive of that name's
falling outside a normal pattern.
Metropolis occurs only three times in Bede's notices of British places,
twice for Canterbury and once for London. It is important because he
clearly uses it to mean 'capital', saying of one 'imperii sui totius erat
metropolis' and of the other 'Orientalium Saxonum . . . quorum
metropolis Lundonia civitas est' (OH, pp. 46, 85). The ninth-century
translation's equivalent is ealdorburg, aldorburg (Miller ed. 1890, I, pp.
60, 104).
Perhaps the most striking thing about Bede's urban vocabulary is the
number of words for towns which he could have used, but did not.
Thus, for example, Isidore uses oppidum as almost synonymous with
civitas and urbs; castellum and castrum are other words which Bede could
have used. In fact it can be shown that when Bede uses one of these
words he is certainly or almost certainly following a written source.
Consider his use of oppidum. It occurs three times in the Ecclesiastical
History in contexts in which it is not plainly copied in with the rest of a
passage from e.g. Orosius. Bede's first apparently independent use of it
comes in his description of Osric's rashly besieging Cadwallon in oppido
municipio (OH, p. 128).8 This passage is the only one in which he uses
municipium. The second instance comes in his list of the types of place
which Chad visited: oppida, rura, casa, vicos, castella (OH, p. 195). This
passage also contains one of his only two uses of casa (the other is in the
life of Cuthbert, Colgrave ed. 1940, p. 252), and one of his two uses of
castellum when he is not following a written source. The third
superficially independent use of oppidum is in his description of Utrecht
8
The common identification with York seems simply a guess. It is more likely that
oppidum municipium is a Latin version of the Cair Mincip (Mencipit) which occurs in the
Nennian list of twenty-eight civitates (Jackson 1938, pp. 46-49, maintaining that Mincip
derives from municipium}. If so, the place is not York, which appears elsewhere on the
list as Ebrauc (Hebrauc). I am obliged to Dr D. Dumville for transcripts of the Nennian list.
(OH, p. 303). In this description he also uses castellum, his only
apparently independent use of the word to set beside that in the list of
places visited by Chad. Thus on the three occasions of his using oppidum
where he is not following a known written source it appears once with
munidpium, twice with castellum. On both the occasions he uses castellum
it appears with oppidum. On the only occasion he uses munidpium it
appears with oppidum. On one of the only two occasions he uses casa it
appears with oppidum and castellum. This marked clustering of words
for places which he does not generally use except when following a
written source strongly suggests that in the passages where they occur
he is in fact following written sources now lost, very possibly letters.
Castrum he uses only once (OH, p. 16, to mean, probably, something
like 'fortified camp') except where following a written source known to
us. That Bede deliberately limited his vocabulary in describing towns
and the like and eschewed the full and confusing range of wyords
available to him must be of some significance. It strengthens the case
for his having a conscious purpose in his use of urbs and civitas. If,
notwithstanding what is contended above, it is supposed that he used
these words almost at random, then it has to be explained why he did
not take the opportunity open to him to employ a vocabulary with
much more possibility of elegant variation.
A preliminary examination of some other writers using Latin in
England before c.800 does a little to illuminate Bede's use of urbs and
civitas. Eddius's usage is not dissimilar. London and York are civitates
(Moonen ed. 1946, pp. 148, 78, 86, 92, 152, 168). Three urbes are
mentioned, Bamburgh, Dunbar and the unidentified Inbroninis (ibid.,
pp. 196, 134, 138). All are described as royal and the context makes it
clear that all are fortresses. Lichfield is simply locus (ibid., p. 92). Eddius
gives the vernacular names for Colodaesburg and Bamburgh, as Bede
does not, but calls only the latter urbs, not the former (ibid., pp. 140,
196). Strasbourg (Streitbyrg) is for him civitas (ibid., p. 114). So far as
the limited number of examples goes it seems that for him civitas is a
former Roman town (cf. ibid., pp. 110, 184) and an urbs is a fortress, all
his urbes being Northumbrian and royal. His usage is less affected by
vernacular forms than is Bede's. Other early hagiographers have less to
offer. The anonymous biographer of Cuthbert calls Carlisle a civitas, as
does Bede (Colgrave ed. 1940, pp. 117, 123, 125). Felix calls
Cambridge castellum, so using a word which Bede avoids (Colgrave ed.
1956, p. 86).
Charters and other documents are more helpful.9 Sometimes the
9
What follows is based on an examination of the charters earlier than 800. Those
agreed to be spurious have been excluded. In deciding which to include I have relied
considerably on the comments reported by Sawyer 1965. The roughness of this
procedure does not, I believe, affect the main conclusions below, which derive from the
consensus of the documents.
usage corresponds to Bede's. Worcester is almost always Weorgana
civitas, Wegernensis civitas, Weogornacaestre or the like, with variations of
spelling (Birch, nos. 223, 183, 256, cf. 137, 164, 220, 269, 283). Once it
is castrum Uueogernensis (no. 156). There is one possibly early charter
which refers to Winchester and one for Hereford: these places appear as
civitas and locus respectively (nos. 180, 295). A striking correspondence
with Bede's usage appears in a document from the Council of Clovesho
(803) (no. 312). Of thirteen bishops who attest eight do so in the form
Legorensis civitatis episcopus: those of Canterbury, Leicester, Worcester,
Winchester, London, Rochester, Syddensis civitas and Dummucae civitas.
The other five use the form ecclesiae Liccedfeldensis episcopus: those of
Lichfield, Hereford, Sherborne, Elmham and Selsey. Thus Bede's dis-
tinction between places in caestir (with Canterbury) and other places is
observed and (setting on one side the two unidentified places) it is also a
distinction between places which had been of some Roman importance
and those which had not.
Canterbury is often called civitas in charters (Birch, nos. 67, 90, 190,
191, 195). But it significantly appears as urbs also (nos. 159, 192, 265).
That the use of urbs here is due at least in part to the pull of the
vernacular name is strongly suggested by Birch no. 265, which first
says in urbe Dorobernia then in urbe Canteuuariorum. (It also mentions
Lundoniam civitatem.) Apart from its use for Canterbury, urbs seems to
be employed in the pre-800 charters only to denote a fortification (nos.
230, 232, in both cases the fortification has a name in burg and in one is
certainly a hill-fort).
Rochester is sometimes civitas (Campbell ed. 1974, nos. 5, 13) but
also castellum (ibid., nos. 7, 12) and castrum (ibid., no. 14). The use of
castellum and castrum here is interesting because while they do not appear
to be used in charters for other towns (for one exception see above) they
do appear in the first two documents to mention Rochester. The record
of the council of Paris of 614 calls the bishop of Rochester 'Ex civitate
Castro ultra mare lustus episcopus' and that of the council of Hertford
(672) calls him 'episcopus castelli Cantuariorum quod dicitur
Hrofescaestir' (Maassen ed. 1883, I, p. 192; OH, p. 215). It seems there-
fore that the use of castrum or castellum for Rochester in charters was not
casual, but had a long history. The area associated with Rochester
appears to have been known as regio Caestruuara; Burgwara appears in
connexion with the area associated with Canterbury (Chadwick 1905,
pp. 250, 252). Perhaps in early Kent Canterbury was known simply as
the burg and Rochester as the caestre.
London does appear as a civitas (Birch, no. 265) but more frequently
as portus (nos. 34, 149, 152) and once as 'loco cuius vocabulum est
Lundenwic' (no. 189). Bede only once calls a place portus when he is not
1
Miss C. Colyer pointed out to me the interest of this document.
using the words of another, Quentovic (Quentauic) and Eddius also
only uses portus once, of Sandwich (portum Sandwicae) (OH, p. 203; ed.
Moonen 1946, p. 88). It looks very much as if portus was the Latin
equivalent of wic, so that portus Londoniae was Lundenwic put into Latin.
It is not certain however, that Lundenwic and London were quite the
same thing. It may be that the former was a port area beside the latter.
Three of the charters which use portus of London refer to customs dues
and the fourth (Birch no. 34) refers to land given 'iuxta portum
Lundoniae ubi naves applicant super idem flumen in meridiana parte
iuxta viam publicam'. This could mean that the portus was on the south
bank or that it was a separate area e.g. downstream of the bridge.
In one case only do charters use civitas for a place where Bede does
not. This is Reculver which he mentions simply as 'monasterio . . .
Racuulfe nuncupatur' (OH, p. 295). It appears in charters in forms
similar to this (Birch, nos. 199, 173) but also as Raculfcestre and civitate
Recuulf (nos. 243, 45). It is significant that Reculver had an important
Roman past.
In short there is some general correspondance between Bede's usage
in regard to urbs and civitas and that prevailing among other early
English writers in Latin. In the other sources referred to above civitas
seems nowhere to be used for a place not of Roman significance and for
only two without a name in caestir: Carlisle and Canterbury. An urbs is a
fortress, not at a place of Roman significance. The only exception is
Canterbury with its name in burg. Unlike Bede other writers
occasionally use castrum and castellum and in particular for Rochester,
where the employment of these words may reflect something special
about the place and its early name. Consideration of other sources adds
portus to the list of significant terms for places and suggests that it is the
equivalent of wic.
The examination of the use made by Bede and others of urbs, civitas
and similar terms does permit a few general conclusions and
suggestions about places in early England. It seems that there was a real
distinction drawn between Roman and non-Roman places. This is
reflected not only in the evidence cited above but in the fact that names
in burg were very rarely given to Roman places of significance,
notwithstanding their fortifications. Of between ninety and a hundred
places in Roman Britain with some claim to be called a town (not all
11
were fortified) no more than six ended with names containing burg.
These were Canterbury, Richborough, Littleborough, Wanborough,
Aldborough and Brough. Of these Canterbury may possibly have had
an early name in caestir (p. 36 n. 5 above), Richborough certainly did
(OH, p. 9) and the other four have names which first appear in the late
11
This figure is derived from the lists of towns or likely towns in Map of Roman
Britain 1956 and Rodwell and Rowley 1975.
eleventh century and need not reflect early usage. That Canterbury was
a special case is indicated by the way in which, for this town alone, the
charters fluctuate between urbs and civitas and the Old English
translation of Bede between burg and ceastre. It was a place with a name
in burg but of a kind which would normally have been called civitas,
ceastre. With the sole exception of Bede's one reference to London as
urbs I have found no instance of a British place which is normally called
civitas being called urbs, Canterbury apart. While it would be
unreasonable to assert that there was an absolute distinction in
vernacular usage between burg and caestir it is reasonable to deduce that
there was a real and general distinction. This tells one a little about the
views taken of the Roman past; for example it clearly mattered to
someone in 803 to distinguish between bishops whose sedes were
civitates and the others (though his interest could have been philologicial
rather than historical). The distinction between the names of Roman
places and of others certainly affords clues in the search for the location
of, for example, Cnobheresburg or Sidnacaester; the one probably was not
a Roman place, the latter probably was.
Urbes deserve more attention than they have received. Eddius is
suggestive about them. Those he mentions (above p. 104) were significant
places; each of the two (apart from Bamburgh) in his book was suitable
for the safe-keeping of an important prisoner and in the charge of a
praefectus. Praefectus is commonly translated 'reeve', but it was a word
with a range of meanings and could denote men of the highest rank of the
kind who elsewhere could be termed principes, duces or ealdormen
(Chadwick 1905, pp. 228, 251, 259-60, 282-84). Another praefectus
whom Eddius mentions was the king of Mercia's nephew (Moonen ed.
1946, p. 142). His Northumbrian praefecti may have exercised authority
over wide areas from their urbes.1 Eddius does not extend urbs to cover
such places as Colodaesburg. This is a likely indication of the way in which
Bede's habit of translating vernacular names into Latin could lead him to
apply the same word to places of different kinds. Nevertheless it is not
without significance that some monasteries had names in burg translated
urbs. Granted that it is by no means certain that all monasteries had a
defensive vallum (Cramp, 1976, pp. 204-6, 209) the names afford some
means of detecting those associated with a fortification, though not of
determining its age. Urbs and burg continued to be used to describe
fortified monasteries in later centuries. William of Malmesbury saw a
stone which had been taken from an old wall at Shaftesbury and which
bore the inscription 'Anno Dominicae incarnationis Elfridus rex fecit
hanc urbem DCCC octogesimo regni sui viii' (Hamilton ed. 1870, p.
12
Edwin's praefectus at Lincoln may have been in a similar position. Thegerefa of the
Anglo-Saxon translation has tended to drag down in historians' eyes one who may have
been more like a 'sub-king' than a 'reeve', OH, p. 117; Miller ed. 1890, I, p. 145.
186). A passage (probably twelfth century) interpolated into the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, E version, explains that after a wall was built round the
monastery of Medeshamstead in about 1000 it was called Burch (Earle
and Plummer ed. 1892, I, p. 177). A fortress may have contained a good
deal of ground and many men have lived in and around it, especially if it
was a centre of royal power. A fortified monastery may have had many
buildings and a considerable population and have been not unlike a royal
fortress. The early uses of urbs and burg may indicate not so much the
undue inclusiveness of these terms as the undue divisiveness of ours:
town, fortress, monastery.
In considering the hierarchy of places it is significant that Bede uses
metropolis to mean 'capital'. A charter of 718 X745 provides another
metropolis to set beside his London and Canterbury: Worcester,
metropolim Huicdorum (Birch, no. 166). A letter of Alcuin's gives a similar
role to York: caput totius regni (Duemmler ed. 1895, p. 43). The way in
which Bamburgh is treated in early sources indicates the possibility that
it had a similar position in Bernicia (above p. 00). That the Old English
translation of Bede renders metropolis as ealdorburg suggests that a burg
could be something like a capital. Notwithstanding the extent to which
early kings perambulated round their vills, early kingdoms were not
necessarily multifocal but could have a civitas or an urbs which was the
chief one of all.
Bede's most frequently used terms for less important places as vicus
and villa. They are used in a fairly general sense to mean something like
'village' and synonymously. There is no apparent difference between
villa in e.g. 'veniente in villam clerico vel presbytero, cuncti ad eius
imperium verbum audituri confluerunt' and vicus in e.g. 'siquis
sacerdotum in vicum forte devineret mox congregati in unum vicani
verbum vitae ad illo expetere curabant' (OH, 269, 191). Vicus and villa
are similarly used synonymously with a qualification such as regis or regia
to denote a royal vill e.g. AdMurum is called both vicus regis and villa regia
(OH pp. 170, 172). There may be just a shade of difference between them
in this context in so far as Bede twice refers to a villa regia as being at a
place. (OH, p. 115). No use of vicus quite like this occurs; and so it looks
as if villa rather than vicus was the word which came to him when he was
thinking of the buildings and establishment of a royal vill. Bede uses the
diminutive viculus fairly frequently. That he could employ vicus and
viculus in successive sentences to denote the same place (Colgrave ed.
1940, p. 200) makes it plain that he did not distinguish sharply between
the two, though it is likely that quite often he used the diminutive
advisedly (see p. 111 below). A more remarkable usage is that ofpossessio
for a place. The most unambiguous instance of this comes in the life of
Cuthbert, where the saint is described as going to a possessio of the
monastery of Whitby to see the abbess Aelfflaed and to dedicate a church
(Colgrave ed. 1940, p. 262 and p. 112 below).
Be de 's Words for Places 109
So far it might seem that there is not a great deal to be learned by
considering Bede's words for minor places. But some of his usages
seem more significant if looked at in relation to what is becoming
increasingly clear about the organisation of lordship and local
government in large areas of early England. It appears, largely thanks
to the remarkable way in which Professors Jones and Barrow have built
on the foundations laid long ago by Robertson, Maitland and Jolliffe
that common, possibly omnipresent, elements were units of
government and exploitation of the type of the Northumbrian small
shire and the Kentish lathe, centred on a royal vill, and in close,
probably elaborate, relationship with 'extensive estates' with scattered
members owing dues and services to some central place (Jones 1976,
Barrow 1973). One thing in Bede's usage which fits with the nature of
such an early system is his use of vicus and villa synonymously. No
investigation of the distinction and relations between the two such as
has been undertaken for early Gaul (e.g. Latouche 1956, pp. 76-85)
could possibly be based on his work.13 This is probably because the
property and rights of the great were not concentrated in villa estates in
the Continental sense, but were focused on central places which were
often also centres of population. An English villa regia was not a great
estate in the sense of a discrete block of land owned and exploited in
special ways. Rather was it the centre of a fairly wide area all or most of
whose people owed something to it. If, as may well have been, there
were lands within such an area which were particularly bound to and
exploited from it, they probably formed a kind of archipelago. There
would have been no point in trying to decide whether the central place
of such a complex was more appropriately termed villa or vicus.
It is probable that many of the villae and vid to which Bede refers
were not just villages, but central places of this kind. Of those which he
names or provides some information about in the Ecclesiastical History
eight were royal and one belonged to a comes.14 Of three which are
named in the anonymous life of Cuthbert one was not improbably
royal;1 we know nothing of the others. It is likely that the vid and villae
of which we read in the accounts of the lives of holy bishops were often
royal even when we are not told so. Paulinus seems to have worked
from royal vills (OH, pp. 114-15). Aidan also based himself'in aliis
villis regis' apart from that at which he died (OH, pp. 159-60).
Although we have no such specific information about Cuthbert and
13
By the eighth century vicus and villa may have been drawing closer together in
Gaul.
14
Ad Murum, Campodonum, Rendlesham, Yeavering, Maelmin and Catterick (not
explicitly stated as royal), for all of which see the appendix, with the vills by the
Derwent and near Bamburgh (OH, pp. 99, 159). For the villa . . . comitis, OH, p. 286.
15
Medilwong (Colgrave ed. 1940, p. 119), because a Northumbrian king was killed
by hisfamilia there in 759 (Arnold ed. 1882, II, pp. 41, 376).
Wilfrid it is likely that they, similarly, based themselves on royal vills.
If so it was probably at such that they wrought their wonders. So, on
occasion vilia or vicus in the hagiographical sources may have a more
specific meaning that is immediately clear from the context.
Even though Bede sometimes uses villa and vicus in fairly wide or
vague senses there may have been contexts in which it seemed to him
inappropriate to do so. One way of approaching this possibility is to set
it beside the odd fact that although villa and vicus are common words in
the narrative sources they are not so in the charters. I have found
seventeen references to gifts of rural villae and vici in charters of before
800. Of these only three are in texts which appear sufficiently authentic
for significance to be attached to their wording.16 The shortage of
references to villae and vici suggests that, in charters, these are not
words applied to the common run of settlements but rather to royal
vills which were not often given away. The commonest word for a
settlement in early charters is simply terra, in formulae such as '. . .
terram juris nostri quinque aratrorum quae appellatur Littelburne' (no.
90) or '. . . terram VIII manentium quae nominatur aet Baeccessor . . .'
(no. 163). These names, like many of those given to terrae in early
charters, survive as those of modern places (Cox 1975/76, passim). It
seems likely that a terra with an assessment at about the level of that of
these two places was a single settlement with its land. Sometimes a terra
has a much larger assessment. It then generally has component
settlements which have names and often assessments of their own, as
for example in grants of Caedwalla's ('. . . terram . . . confero cuius
vocabulum est Farnham in cassatos LX . . . quorum X in Bintumgom,
II in Cert. . .'),17 Frithuwold's ('. . . sunt tamen diversa nomina de . . .
terra supradicta, scilicet . . .') and Offa's ('. . . dabo terram septies
quinos tributariorum jugera continentem . . . Est autem rus praefatus
in HHor villulis separatum hoc est Teottingtun . . . v manentium . . .
viculus qui nominatur aet Uuassanburnam . . . x cassatorum . . . tertius
viculus est ... aet Codesuuallan aeque x mansionum et quartus viculus
hoc est Nordtun x manentium') (Birch, nos. 72, 34, 236). Such grants
reveal a system whereby substantial areas were assessed at considerable
round numbers of hides which were apportioned among the component
villages. It is likely that such areas (which sometimes have names of their
own stated, sometimes not) were often those centred on royal vills,
16
Birch nos. 202/3, 209/10, 246. The spurious or more doubtful charters are Birch
nos. 6, 27, 64, 66, 82, 130, 169, 204, 226, 231, 235, 240, 244, 252 (82 and 169 have
attracted some favourable opinions; the villa in the former has an -ingaham name, cf. p.
48 below; the reference in the latter is g e n e r a l . . . in vilis et in vicis . . J . I have excluded
e.g. nos. 185 and 219 because they refer to lands which ad villam . . . subjacent, pertinet ad
villam. 192 and 248 relate to a villa and a vicus in Canterbury.
17
The list of names in this charter gives the impression of having been abbreviated
by a copyist.
which may therefore, in such charters, be what are being given away,
though no trustworthy early charter seems to say so. One which is
probably spurious does and is worth quoting even if it does no more than
show how an eleventh-century monk of Worcester believed land tenure
to have been organised three hundred years before. It is attributed to
Offa. 'Dabo . . . regalem vicum Croppon]?orn . . . cum omnibus
membris per loca varia fundatis et nominibus segregatis ad vicum
eundem pertinentibus. Ad Croppe]?orn VII manentes, ad Noe]?eretune I,
aet Elmlege II, aet Criddesho I, aet Ceorletune XIIII, xt Heantune XV, aet
Bencinwyrede I. Quae in unum collectae sunt L manentes' (ibid., no.
235; Ker 1948, pp. 54, 68). The charters granting estates containing
several settlements are those which provide the most helpful clues to the
relationship between the system of assessment and the system of organi-
sation described by Jones and Barrow. Such large grants often give the
appearance of being of a single block of land. It is likely that some at least
of the 'multiple' estates which later appear as archipelagos dependent on a
particular centre represent what was left of such a block after numerous
gifts of single settlements of the kind familiar in the charters had been
made. Such grants of single places or of groups less than the whole set
depending on a royal vill are those most frequently met with.
It is argued above that the apparent reluctance of the early charters to
use villa or vicus for settlements is because those words denoted royal
vills. Although Bede uses them more freely it is likely that to him also
they carried with them the implication that a royal vill was, or might,
be intended. (He describes Catterick, which was almost certainly a
royal vill, as vicus without qualification (OH, pp. 115, 155). It is likely,
therefore, that his employment of other words for settlements is on
occasion due to a wish to avoid villa or vicus in contexts where
juxtaposition with a royal vill or possible ambiguity made it seem
desirable or natural to avoid the possible implication that such a vill or
vills was intended. Thus, when he writes of Paulinus baptising at
Yeavering and of'confluentem eo de cunctis viculis et locis plebem' he
probably avoids villa or vicus because Yeavering had just been
mentioned as villam regiam as he does not mean that people were
flocking to it from villae in the sense that it was a villa (OH, p. 155). A
similar instance is the account of Penda's assault on Bamburgh
'discissisque viculis, quos in vicinia urbis invenit' (OH, p. 159). The
only royal vill in the vicinity of Bamburgh was probably that at which
Aidan died; and so a different word was appropriate for the settlements
round about. Bede does not use terra by itself to indicate a place, except
perhaps in the Lives of the Abbots where he writes of 'terram octo
familiarum . . . terram viginti familiarum . . . in loco qui incolarum
lingua ad Villam Sambuce vocatur . . . terram decem familiarum . . .
in loco villae quae Daltun nuncupatur' (OH, p. 380). These descriptions
of lands acquired by his abbey use language recalling that of charters,
and may indeed be derived from such. (It is likely but not certain that
what was given in the last two instances was not the places named but
others dependent on them.) Ordinarily Bede's nearest equivalent to the
terra of the charters is possessio. The plainest instance of his using
possessio to mean a place is in his account of Cuthbert's coming 'ad
possessionem monasterii ipsius (cf. Whitby)' on purpose to dedicate a
church, which makes it reasonably certain that the possessio was a
settlement (Colgrave ed. 1940, p. 262). It may be that Bede's use of the
somewhat unusual possessio here is the counterpart to the unusual
parrochia used by his source, the anonymous life, in its account of the
same miracle '. . . i n parrochia eius quae dicitur Osingaeun . . .' (ibid.,
p. 126). Just what the latter meant by parrochia is not easy to know, but I
would suggest that Bede took it to mean something like 'the area
dependent on Ovington'; that is to say assumed that the miracle took
place not at Ovington but at some component settlement of the
Ovington estate and that this suggested possessio as the appropriate
word. Similarly in his account of a miracle at Selsey '. . . neque aliquis
de hoc monasterio sive adiacentibus ei possessiunculis hac clade ultra
moriturus est.' he probably means by possessiuncula the settlements
which were component parts of the Selsey estate (OH, p. 234). Again in
the life of Cuthbert, when he refers to 'magnis quondam refertisque
habittaoribus villis et possessionibus' he is probably thinking of villae,
estate centres, and possessiones, subordinate settlements (Colgrave ed.
1940, p. 258). In the account of the Selsey incident as in his description
of Oswy's gift of XII possessiunculis terrarum in gratitude for victory he
uses not possessio, but the diminutive (OH, p. 178). The implication
cannot be pejorative, for he uses the diminutive in contexts in which
there can be no question of such an intention (OH, pp. 28, 234). It
might derive from a polite formula in a charter (cf. Birch, no. 229). In
any case there can be no sharp distinction between possessio and its
diminutive, for the estates Oswy gave are also described as possessiones
(OH, p. 178). It is possible that there was a degree of ambiguity in
possessio (as there was in terra in charters), because it could be used either
to denote a settlement or a wider area containing several settlements,
for example in Bede's reference to Caedwalla's gift of a possessio terrae of
three-hundred hides (OH, p. 237). Thus there may have been an
inclination to use possessiunculum when a single settlement was in mind.
In any case what Bede almost certainly means in his description of
Oswy's gift is that he gave twelve villages, not villae regales, but
important components of twelve such.
In a grant of Caedwalla's, Farnham, which has become the name of a
single place, is that of a large estate, with named components (Birch,
no. 72). It is likely that in early usage the same name could be applied
both to a place and to an area; e.g., as the author of the Cropthorne
charter supposed, both to the actual place at which a royal vill was
Be de 's Words for Places 113
situated, and to the area dependent on that vill (above, p. 109). It looks as
if sometimes, as at Farnham, the name of a place was extended to an
area; but also as if, sometimes, the name of an area became attached to
its central place. The latter is suggested by the English place-names
which seem to have originated as area names, for example, Leeds,
Lyminge, Ely, and some of these when they appear in early sources are
explicitly applied to a regio: for example, Cuningham, Dent, Yeading
(for all these names see Cox 1975/76, pp. 39-42, s.v.). A comparable
instance appears in Bede. Eddius says that Wilfrid had a monastery 'qui
in Undolum positum est', 'coenobum in Undolum', (Moonen ed.
1946, pp. 204, 210). Bede, in a passage in which he is probably
following Eddius says that Wilfrid died 'in provincia quae vocatur
Inundalum', and 'in monasterio suo quod habebat in provincia
Undalum' (OH, pp. 322, 330). Thus he goes out of his way to indicate
that Oundle was not so much a place as an area, indeed a wide area, for
provincia is his normal term for a kingdom or sub-kingdom and he
elsewhere applies it to nothing of less importance than the provinciae of
the Meanuari, the Hwicce, and the South Gyrvii (Jones 1929, s.v.}.
Thus Oundle is a clear example of an area name which later became a
place-name. It is likely that all the names of English places which Bede
gives in such a form as In Getlingum, Ingyruum were of the same kind,
related to his In Brige, which is now Faremoutier-en-Brie. The
relationship between names for places and names for areas raises
questions about those in ingas and ingaham. Perhaps such as Barking,
Woking, Lastingham and Hruringaham gained their names because they
were central places for areas or peoples (for these names see Cox 19757
76). That is to say that they may have been royal vills. It is important to
avoid the preconception that there must necessarily be something
primitive or 'tribal' about such names. There may be; but the Anglo-
Saxons gave 'people' names to areas and governmental divisions to
which later centuries would have given 'area' names. What sounds like
a tribe may have been only an administrative district.18
Some of the difficulties in which Bede found himself in selecting
words for lesser places are echoed and to a degree illuminated by the
vernacular sources. The Old English translation of Bede rightly draws
no distinction between his villa and his vicus; both are usually translated
tun, and, if royal, as cynelican tun.19 Tun as an element in place-names
18
Ekwall 1960, p. xiii. The early forms of Dorset and Somerset are particularly
suggestive, for they are 'people' names derived from administrative centres, and when
they first appear denote not tribes, but shires.
1
The most significant exceptions are the use of cyninges alderbold and cyninges bold
in translating Bede's references to Edwin's vills by the Derwent and at Campodonum
respectively (Miller ed. 1890, I. pp. 122, 140). Alderbold means head or chief bold which
suggests that the translator may have had independent information about the vill in
question. The common meaning of bold is 'dwelling-place' but it appears in poetry in
continued
has been considerably discussed. Professor Smith concluded that its
original meaning was 'enclosure' but that in the course of time its
meaning became extended to include, for example 'village', 'estate'
(Smith 1956, 11, pp. 188-97). In giving the derivations of place-names
experts seem generally to render it as 'farm'. It may deserve further
consideration. It is not a common element in names which occur in
early sources. Dr Cox found six instances in his examination of sources
earlier than c. 730 and could have added a seventh from Bede's Lives of
the Abbots, Daltun (Cox 1975/76, esp. pp. 51, 53, 63; OH, p. 380). Of
these, three are the names of places of three or four hides (Acton,
Wilmington (Pleghelmstun), Herotunum), one of a place of twenty hides
(Wootton), one of a vicus at which Ethelred of Mercia made a grant
(Tomturi), one of a villa (Daltun) and one of a place in Scotland
(Penneltun). It could be that in these cases the element always, as Dr
Cox suggests, means 'an enclosure, farmstead'. Some doubt as to this
arises if one adds to the list places named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
before 800 with names in tun. They are Bensington (taken by Cuthwulf
in 571 and by Offa in 779 (Earle and Plummer ed. 1892, 1897, I, pp. 19,
51, cf. p. 50 below), Meretun where Cynewulf met his death while
visiting his mistress in 757 (ibid., pp. 46, 47), Taunton, which Ine built
and Aethelburh destroyed (ibid., pp. 42, 43), Somerton which
Aethelbald occupied in 733, villa regia (ibid., pp. 44, 45; Campbell ed.
1962, p. 21) and Seletun where a Northumbrian ealdorman was burned
to death (Earle and Plummer ed. 1892, 1897,1, p. 50). Certainly in most
cases, probably in all, these are royal vills. It could be that, at least by
800, tun was already so common a place-name element that, by
statistical necessity, it was found in the names of places of many kinds.
Thus the places met in tun in the Chronicle could be royal vills, not so
much because royal vills were particularly likely to have names in tun as
because the Chronicle was particularly likely to give the names of royal
vills; events tended to happen at such places and the Chronicle is
concerned with events. It is true that while the early tuns in the
Chronicle are significant places, most of those whose gift is recorded in
charters are not.
The argument that the apparent connexion between names in tun and
continued
contexts which suggests 'a superior hall, a castle, a mansion' (Smith 1956, I, pp. 41,
43-44). It seems that the poetic meaning here appears in prose. The words occurs once in
the laws, in a law of Alfred's, in a compound boldgetale (Attenborough 1922, p. 81).
Boldgetale, elsewhere used to translate provincia, probably means 'shire' here, though
possibly some smaller unit. It has been suggested that its derivation in this context is
from a collection of dwellings (e.g. Smith 1956, I, p. 44) but it could be that the
collection is not of dwellings but of people, e.g. those dependent on a royal vill. That
this law of Alfred uses bold as other laws do not, and that the word was used in the
formation of place-names in the North and Midlands but not in Wessex suggests the
possibility of derivation from Offa's code.
Bede 's Words for Places 115
royal vills is substantially coincidental is seductive but involves
difficulties. A famous annal in the Chronicle, that for 571, uses tunas for
four places which Cuthwulf captured from the Britons: Limbury,
Aylesbury, Bensington and Eynsham (Earle and Plummer ed. 1892,
1899, I, pp. 18, 19 'iiii tunas genom'). It seems unlikely that this annal is
singling out homesteads or farms for special mention. These must be
places of significance, and the most recent translation of the Chronicle
recognises this by translating tunas here as 'towns', though elsewhere
the word is rendered 'village' (Whitelock, Douglas and Tucker 1965, p.
13 and p. 14 (s.a. 584). These places were probably not towns in any
usual sense, though, but royal vills. Bensington was a place which later
had four and a half hundreds associated with it and Aylesbury had eight
and so we can reasonably guess that they were centres of authority at an
early date (Cam 1944, p. 106). Had Bede been writing of the events of
571 probably he would have said that Cuthwulf took four villas or vicos
regales, just as if he had been describing Ceawlin's capture of three
ceastre in 577 he would probably have used cwitates. Of course, the
Chronicle's choice of words is not strictly evidence for what they were
taken to mean before the late ninth century.20 But it is very hard to
believe that its use of tun for a significant place, likely to have been a
royal vill, simply reflects late ninth-century idiom. It is much more
likely that, from an early date, one of the meanings of tun was 'royal
vill' and, for example, that the Tomtun where Ethelred of Mercia had a
vicus and made a grant 'in cubiculo proprii vici qui nominatur Tomtun'
was not, as Dr Cox implies, a place by the Teme, which took its name
from a farm, subsequently keeping that name when a royal vill was
built there, but rather was called Tomtun because it was a royal vill by
the Teme. Such an early meaning for tun would help to explain the
much later translation of tun by pagus, if the term were extended from a
royal vill to the area dependent on it (Wright and Wiilcker 1884, I, p.
177; Smith 1956, II, p. 190). I do not seek to maintain that tun does not,
in place-names, mean all the things which experts say it means. But it
does look as if an important meaning, and an early meaning, was 'royal
vill'. Place-name studies seem in the past to have proceeded on a tacit
assumption that the early history of England is largely one of the
progress of settlement and have not always given attention to the
possible relations between the names of places and their functions
within structures of authority.
20
The origin of such early annals is an unsolved problem. That they so often refer to
warfare between Britons and Saxons and almost never to warfare between Saxons
(which must have been common) suggests an ultimate British and so Latin origin as a
possibility. The names given in the 571 annal can hardly be contemporaneous with the
date attributed, unless there were already Anglo-Saxon names (or Germanizations of
British names) for places in British hands. If the interpretation of tunas suggested above is
accepted then there is an implication of a possible transfer not only of places, but also of
organized areas of government, from Britons to Saxons.
The largely late evidence used by Jones and Barrow, the early
charters, and Bede's choice of words all tell the same tale, that there
were such structures and that fundamental to them was the organisation
of administration and exploitation round royal vills on systems to
which assesssment in hides and the like was intrinsic. In exploring the
in some ways oddly orderly world of early England the identification of
places with special functions is of particular importance. The study of
vocabulary has at least this to contribute to the much-to-be-hoped for
historical gazeteer of early England. It permits the formulation of
questions which go with the grain of sources. 'What and where were
the metropolises, civitates, urbes, villae/vid regales and portusT are not
questions which hold forth the hope of complete or unambiguous
answers. But they are in large measure answerable.21
21
This paper derives from one circulated at a conference on early towns organized by
the Council for British Archaeology at Birmingham in June 1976.
APPENDIX
Words used for places in Britain by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History, Lives of the Abbots and
prose Life o/Cuthbert.
Name Times Times Times Times Times

(The modern name is given called called called called called
when the identification is sure) metropolis civitas urbs vicus villa
AdMurum I1 I2
Alcluith I3 24
5
Bamburgh 2 106
Cambridge I7
Campodonum I8
Canterbury 29 1010 211
12
Carlisle 3
213
Catterick
Chester I 14
1 9
p. 170 pp. 46, 47.
2 10
p. 172. pp. 46 (twice), 47, 70 (twice), 85, 93,
! P. 13- 94 (twice), 350.
4 11
p. 26 (twice). pp. 46, 94.
5 12
p. 152; Colgraveed. 1940, p.245. p. 274; Colgrave ed. 1940,
6
pp. 138, 158 (twice), p. 243 (twice).
13
159 (seven times) . pp. 115, 155.
7 14
p. 245 (civitatula, p. 244). p. 84.
8
p. 115.
Name Times Times Times Times Times

(The modern name is given called called called called called
when the identification is sure) metropolis civ it as urbs incus villa
Cnobheresburg I15
416
Coludi urbs
Daltun I 17
18
Dommoc I
219
Dorchester
Giudi urbs I 20
Lincoln I21
723
I 24
22
London I
Maelmin I 25
Malmesbury I 26
Rendlesham I 27
Richborough I 28
?29
Rochester
Ad villam Sambuce I30
Tadcaster (Calcaria} I 31
Tilbury I32
Tiouulfingcaestir I33
Tunnacaestir I 34
Verulamium I 35
636
Winchester
York 337
Ythancaestir I38
Yeavering I39
15 28 „
p. 164. P 9.
16
pp. 243, 262 (twice); Colgrave ed. » k . 85, 93, 154, 206, 228 (twice),
1940, p. 189. 354.
17
p. 380.
30
P 380.
18
19
p. 117. " I 253.
20
pp. 139, 140. *>, 173.
p. 25. p 117.
34
21
22
p. 117. p 250.
p. 85. » P 21.
23 36
pp. 85 (twice), 141, 218, 225, 327, 350. pp . 140 (twice), 236, 321,
24
p. 226. 350 (twice).
25
p. 115.
37 . 154, 229, 354.
26
p. 320. > P. 172.
27
p. 174. " p . 115.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, T. ed. 1882: Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia. Rolls Series. 2 vols. London
Attenborough F. L. 1922: The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, Cambridge
Barrow, G. W. S. 1973: Pre-feudal Scotland: shires and thanes. The Kingdom of the
Scots. London
Birch, W. de G. ed: Cartularium Saxonicum. 3 vols, 1885-93. London
Cam, H. M. 1944: Liberties and Communities in Medieval England. Cambridge
Campbell, A. ed. 1961: The Chronicle ofAlthelweard. London
1973: Charters of Rochester (Anglo-Saxon Charters I). London
Chadwick, H. M. 1905: Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions. Cambridge
Colgrave, B. ed. 1940: Two Lives of St Cuthbert. Cambridge
1956: Felix's Life ofGuthlac. Cambridge
Cox, B. 1975/76: The Place-names of the earliest English records. English Place-Name
Society Journal, VIII, 12-66
Cramp, R. J. 1976: Monastic sites. The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed.
D. M. Wilson. London
Duemmler, Ed. ed. 1895. Epistolae Karolini Aevi, II. MGH. Berlin
Dalton, O. M. 1927: The History of the Franks by Gergory of Tours. 2 vols. Oxford
Earle, J. and Plummer, C. ed. 1892, 1897: Two of the Anglo-Saxons Chronicles Parallel.
2 vols. Oxford
Ekwall, E. 1960: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Fourth edition.
Oxford
Hamilton, N.E.S.A. ed. 1870: Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi de Gestis Pontificum
Anglorum. Rolls Series, London, etc.
Jackson, K. 1938: Nennius and the twenty-eight cities of Britain. Antiquity, XII, 44-55
et al. 1963: Celt and Saxon. Cambridge
Jones, G. R. J. 1976: Multiple estates and early settlement. Medieval Settlement.
Continuity and Change, ed. P. H. Sawyer, 15-40. London
Jones, P. F. 1929: A Concordance to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede. Cambridge,
Massachussetts
Ker, N. R. 1948: Hemming's Cartulary. Studies in Medieval History presented to F. M.
Powicke, 49-75. Oxford
Lindsay, W. M. ed. 1911: Isidori . . . Etymologicarum . . . Libri XX. 2 vols. Oxford
Krusch, B. ed. 1902: Vita Fursei, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, IV, 423-49. MGH.
Hanover and Leipzig
Latouche, R. 1956: Les origines de I'economie occidentale. Paris
Maassen, F. ed. 1883: Concilia Aevi Merovingici. Concilia, I. MGH. Hanover
Map of Roman Britian 1956. Ordnance Survey. Third edition. Chessington
Miller, T. ed. 1890, 1898: The Old English Version ofBede's Ecclesiastical History. Early
English Text Society XCV, XCVI, CX, CXI. London
Moonen, H. ed. 1946: Eddius Stephanus. HetLeven van Sint Wilfrid. 'S-Hertogen-bosch'
Plummer, C. ed. 1896: Baedae Opera Historica. 2 vols. Oxford
Rodwell, W. and Rowley, T. 1975: Small Towns of Roman Britain (British
Archaeological Reports 15). Oxford
Sawyer, P. H. 1968: Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography. London
Smith, A. H. 1956: English Place-Name Elements. EPNS, xxv-xxvi. 2 vols. London
Whitelock, D., Douglas, D. C. and Tucker, S. I. 1965: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a
Revised Translation. Second edition. London
Wright, T. and Wiilcker, R. P. 1884: Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies. 2 vols.
London
It has now been demonstrated that the supposed monastic remains at Burgh Castle
(p. 101 n.6) above, were almost certainly not such: S. Johnson, Burgh Castle: Excavations
by Charles Green, 1958-61 (East Anglian Archaeology, xx (1983)). Professor G. R.J.Jones
has made a strong case for identifying Inbroninis (p. 104 above) as Fenwick, or a centre
very near Fenwick, in Northumberland: 'Historical Geography and our Landed
Heritage', The University of Leeds Review xix (1976), pp. 53-78.
3. The excavations under York Minster. The column is one of those of the
basilica of the headquarters building of the legionary fortress. There is
evidence that this and adjacent buildings remained standing and in good
repair until at least the ninth century. Edwin's first church at York may have
stood in one of the courtyards here. Ultimately the Roman buildings did not
fall but were demolished. (National Monuments Record)
7
The Age of Arthur*
So difficult, diverse and inadequate are the sources that to seek to write a
history of the British Isles from the fourth century to the seventh must be
to abandon some of the usual principles of historiography. To permute
the innumerable possibilities is to impose more on ordinary prose than it
can bear and to carry reasoning to the point of agnostic chaos. Only a
learned and imaginative man could, and only an imprudent one would,
attempt a comprehensive survey. Mr Morris fills the bill. His
imprudence is marked. He uses to excess the ancient historian's black arts
for making objects resembling bricks with odd stalks of what may or
may not be straw. Supposition is repeatedly presented as fact. But,
however easy experts may find it to use his book for target practice, it is
of great importance. It is brave, comprehensive and imaginative. These
qualities outweigh the flaws which are inevitable when a powerful and
sensitive historical imagination is inadequately controlled and waxes
dogmatic, and over-specific on particulars.
For example, it is mere meiosis to say that Mr Morris's account of
Palladius and Patrick (or indeed of Irish history generally) will fail to
command universal assent. He relies on so doubtful an inference as that a
son of Vortigern married a daughter of Loegaire. He is inclined to bully
his sources as in implying that Prosper must, rather than may, have
regarded Palladius's mission as directed largely against British
Pelagianism. Still, as the first historian to treat of Irish and British history
simultaneously he sees more clearly than most of his predecessors that
the missions to Ireland may belong to a context in which not only British
Pelagianism but also the (hypothetical) policies of Vortigern towards
Irish invasions of Britain were very important. His habit of using
unconditional expressions when the difficulties cry out for conditional
does not diminish the value of his suggestions.
Similarly with his forays into the luxuriant jungle of Welsh, Cornish
and Breton hagiology. Most historians look at it, shudder, and pass on,
occasionally muttering something about St Samson of Dol. Not Mr
Morris, who sets to work to see what he can make of it. For example, a
king or kings called Tewdrig are mentioned in late hagiographies
relating to South Wales, to Cornwall and to Brittany. From them Mr
Morris has worked out the interesting, the all too interesting, careers of
*Review of John Morris, The Age of Arthur (London, 1973).
121
Theodoric, a Goth in the service of King Arthur, and of another man of
the same name, probably a son or grandson of the first. His passion for
the unjustifiably specific creates the urge to defenestrate his book.
Nevertheless it is unlikely that the Tewdrigs appearing in unrelated
sources referring to the same period are all different men. What is said
about them or him cannot be pure fable, if only because of Gregory of
Tours' account of a Breton Theudericus (which also strengthens the case
for the name's being the Germanic one suggested).1 It is not unlikely that
there were Goths on the loose at the right time. In short, here and
elsewhere, Mr Morris makes a reasonable case for supposing that not all
that glitters in the late hagiology is fools' gold. It may be harder to extract
the pure metal than he alleges, but his predecessors have hardly tried at
all.
Even when it is almost certainly wrong he draws attention to
neglected sources and possibilities. For example, he ingeniously tries to
make out that dedications to St Winwaloe (a Breton saint of the sixth
century) in Norfolk and Hertfordshire derive from visits by the saint or a
pupil. His arguments on two of them (Cokenach and Wereham) are to
refute the obvious explanation: that both churches were so dedicated
because they belonged to the abbey of Montreuil, whose patron
Winwaloe was. They are weak. Contrary to what he alleges there is
nothing very extraordinary in English churches being given to a Picard
abbey in the twelfth century. His contention that an early cult in
Hertfordshire is indicated by the description of the Icknield way, five
miles from Cokenach, as Wynewalestrete (c. 1470) depends on the
unsupported assumption that this name did not, in fact, apply to some
thoroughfare nearer St Winwaloe's chapel.2 What he takes to be a
reference to monks already there when the church was given to
Montreuil is almost certainly to the monks of Montreuil.3
It is possible that the cult of Winwaloe in the far west went back to near
the saint's own time. Much of the evidence for interest in the saint in
other parts of England almost certainly derives from Breton exiles of the
tenth century, among whom refugees from Winwaloe's monastery of
Landevennec were important. 4 After the translation of his relics to
Montreuil in the tenth century the cult of Winwaloe was to a large extent
a Picard one. Commercial and other relations with Picardy were
1
The case for its being specifically Gothic is not overwhelming. See e.g., G. T.
Gillespie, A Catalogue of Persons Named in German Heroic Literature (Oxford 1973), 30.
2
J. E. B. Cover, Allen Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Hertfordshire
(Engl. Place-Name Soc., 1958) 175.
3 Dugdale, Monasticon, edd. Caley, Ellis and Bandinel, iv. 151 no. 15.
4
G. H. Doble, The Saints of Cornwall ii (Chatham 1962) 59-65, 93-4, 101. The
dedication to Melor at Amesbury which Mr Morris regards as similarly deriving from a
very early period probably also comes from the Breton immigration of the tenth century,
R. B. Pugh, in Victoria County History of Wiltshire iii (1956) 242-3.
The Age of Arthur 123
probably responsible for its occurence in eastern England in the Middle
Ages.5 If, however, Mr Morris is wrong in what he deduces about the
early period he nevertheless draws attention to interesting and unused
evidence for the extremely complex relations between Britain and the
area between the mouth of the Loire and that of the Rhine in later
centuries.
On the earlier history of these relations he is particularly valuable. He
pays due attention to the evidence for Saxon invasions of Gaul in the fifth
century and provides the fullest account so far available of the Saxon
re-migration to the Continent in the sixth. There is a great deal more to be
found out, for example, from place-names, where such a suggestion as
that of the late C. T. Chevallier that continental place-names cast light on
the conquest of Sussex is worth more attention that it has received.6 The
mystery remains that while the other evidence for Saxon settlement in
the Boulonnais and the Bessin suggest sixth century settlement these are
the only areas where the Gallic part of the Notitia uses the expression in
Htore Saxonum.7 The more these subjects are considered the more it seems
that much of the history of England in the Anglo-Saxon period makes
sense only if it is regarded as part of, as it were, Channel history. Mr
Morris has taken a long stride in the right direction.
To establish the sequence of events he has reconsidered both the
archaeological and the written evidence. He takes Nennius more
seriously than do many of his predecessors, especially on the date of the
Adventus. He takes up Liebermann's suggestion that late sources contain
a trace of early record on the history of East Anglia. There may be a little
of this kind still to find. Bede's inclusion of the Huns and the Rugini
among the peoples a quibus Angli vel Saxones genus et originem duxisse
5
The only dedication to Winwaloe in E. England apart from those mentioned above
was at Norwich. There is no evidence that this church was early. It is not, as Doble (op.
cit., 101) alleges, mentioned in the Carrow foundation charter (Regesta regum Anglo-
Normannomm) iii, edd. Cronne and Davis, no. 615) and its site is rather against an early
date. If, as is possible, the church is pre-Conquest in origin its dedication probably reflects
Flemish or Picard influence in the tenth or eleventh century; cf. the pre-Conquest church
in Norwich dedicated to St Vaast and St Amand (St Vedast). For Winwaloe's being
regarded as a Picard saint see Doble, op. cit., 62; for a little further evidence for his
medieval cult in East Anglia S. C. Cockerell, The Gorleston Psalter (London 1907) 11; and
for commercial connections between Norwich and Picardy in the 13th century, W.
Hudson and J. C. Tingey, The Records of the City of Norwich ii (Norwich 1910) 209-12.
The only evidence for the cult of Winwaloe in England outside the far West before the
tenth century is the inclusion of his feast in a kalendar of the mid-ninth century in
Bodleian MS. Digby 63 and the French and Flemish company he keeps there suggests
that he appears as an import rather than a survival, H. A. Wilson, The Missal of Robert of
Jumieges (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1896) xxxi.
6
The Prankish Origin of the Hastings Tribe', Sussex Arch. Coll. civ (1966) 56 ff.
7
D. A. White, Litus Saxonicum (Madison 1961) 68-72.
8
noscuntur suggests the possibility that an early source lies behind what he
says, for these names belong to a fifth rather than an eighth century
context. Huns sound odd; it is equally odd that Priscus heard of a boast
by Attila that he had authority over the islands in the ocean.9 The Rugii
appear a people who might have gone anywhere and done anything. 10
Mr Morris's treatment of the archaeological evidence is extremely
characteristic. He presents what is in many ways a more methodical
synthesis of the evidence than any archaeologist has produced so far, and
makes a more general attempt to relate the dates of cemeteries to the
course of events. Here, as generally, he has had so much to do which
others have left undone that his work is rough. How rough may be seen
by, for example, comparing his survey of the East Anglian evidence with
the gazeteer compiled by Miss Green and Mr Clough.11
The course of events as he sees it is this. Britain continued to be
essentially Roman for more than a generation after 410. Even Hadrian's
Wall continued to be defended. Hengist and Horsa were brought in as
federates c. 428 and German forces were settled in many threatened areas.
In the 440s they rebelled, seized control of large parts of Britain and
destroyed much of civilised life. Nevertheless between c. 460 and c. 515
Ambrosius and Arthur re-established British power and restricted Saxon
independence to limited areas, notably Kent and East Anglia. Arthur was
the last Roman emperor of Britain. After his death power was divided
among many British rulers, some of whom were of military origin. In
about the middle of the sixth century came the 'second Saxon rebellion'.
Within two generations most of modern England was overrun and
before the end of the seventh century almost the whole.
If Mr Morris's reconstruction of this sequence is often questionable in
large and small particulars it carries conviction as an account of the kind
of thing which probably happened. His wise decision to treat the period
350-650 as a whole enables him to establish a better chronological
perspective than his predecessors', avoiding that foreshortening which
can make a generation in the sixth century seem much shorter than one in
the twentieth. The subjection of modern England (outside Cornwall) to
Saxon dynasties took a period as long as that from the accession of
George III to the present day. During nearly all that time some areas were
8
Hist. Eccles. V, ix. The question Haverfield raised long ago ('Some Place-Names in
Bede', Engl. Hist. Rev. x (1895) 710-11) of how Bede came to know Latin names for
places in Kent and Yorkshire which do not appear in written sources known to have been
available to him remains unanswered.
9
C. E. Stevens, Engl. Hist. Rev. Ivi (1941) 363, n. 7.
10
10 E. Schwarz, Germanische Stammeskunde (Heidelberg 1956) 80-83. (For another
view of the passage in question see Morris, p. 270).
11
J. N. L. Myres and B. Green, The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of Caistor-by-Norwich
and Markshall (London 1973) 258-62.
under British control and it is likely that until well into the sixth century
these included considerable parts of the south and the east. In some areas
Saxon power may have come late. In yet others early Saxon success was
probably followed by British recovery and the later re-establishment of
Saxon power. The relationships between Celts and Saxons must have
been very varied, both in different areas at the same time and at different
times in the same area. Mr Morris rightly contends that the Brito-Saxon
period is too long to be regarded merely as a destructive interlude. For
some two centuries Britons and Saxons both ruled in England in varied
and changing relationships. Those centuries, he argues, did not so much
clear the ground as lay the foundations for later developments.
It is therefore surprising that he has relatively little to say about
institutional and social continuity. He believes that Kent was taken over
by the invaders as 'an intact Roman society' and thus that the
characteristic Kentish institutions are of pre-Saxon origin. He argues for
a Roman origin for important elements in the early institutions of Wales
and much of northern England, indicating possible traces of similar
survival elsewhere. But his discussion of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon
institutions in general leaves them apart. This is a pity, for the course of
events and the kind of development he describes create a plausible
context for a closer relationship.
The evidence for such a relationship is becoming strong. Some of the
early medieval institutions of lordship and local government in northern
England bear such strong resemblances to those of Wales, extending to
matters of detail and vocabulary that the most reasonable conclusion is
that the areas in which the Serjeant of the peace rather than frankpledge
prevailed saw substantial continuity through the invasion period.12
Furthermore, there are strong resemblances between what appear to
have been the early institutions of 'agrarian and political lordship' over
much of Britain. Professor Davis showed that the basic institutions of
West Suffolk, as revealed in Abbot Samson's Kalendar, were almost
certainly of pre-ninth century origin and bore important resemblances to
those of Kent.13 Professor Barrow in a brilliant study (which came too
late for Mr Morris) has gone much further, arguing powerfully that
'from Kent to Northumbria, without a break, some system of
"extensive" royal lordship known variously as lathe, soke, shire or
manerium cum appendiciis had survived long enough for its main features
to be traceable in records of the eleventh and twelfth centuries'. This
system was one whereby goods and services were 'rendered at, and
12
W. Rees in J. R. R. Tolkien and others, Angles and Britons (O'Donnell Lectures,
Cardiff 1963) 148 ff; G. W. S. Barrow, 'Northern English Society in the early Middle
Ages', Northern History iv (1969) 1 ff.
13
R. H. C. Davis, The Kalendar of Abbot Samson (Camden Soc., 3rd Ser. Ixxxiv,
1954) xxxii-xlvii.
directed from, particular centres often at some distance from their
dependencies'. The similarities between the services owed in different
areas and, e.g. in grazing rights, are such as to suggest that the apparent
uniformity of the system is not attributable to the coincidental repetition
of similar ad hoc responses to similar circumstances.14 Important studies
by Dr G. R. J. Jones, on a somewhat different basis, led to similar
conclusions, at least for some areas.15
If it is granted that the renders and services associated with 'extensive
lordship' in the north bespeak a Celtic origin, what is to be made of the
south, where specific evidence of the same kind is lacking, but what
appears to have been essentially the same system was common? It is not
easy to avoid the conclusion that either these institutions are Celtic, or
else the organisation of Anglo-Saxon lordship at the level in question
bore strong resemblances to what prevailed among the Britons.
The problems which arise in such connections as this are of major
importance for the history of Britain, and indeed of Europe. The basic
organisation of the countryside outside the great estates of great men is
largely unknown for the Roman period. For example, discussion of the
origins of the institutions of medieval Kent is bedevilled by lack of
knowledge of those of Roman Kent.16 Even in medieval times the
structure of rural society and of the means by which it was governed and
exploited comes to light only episodically. The true nature of the soke
organisation of West Suffolk is plain only because an abbot of singular
energy took the trouble to record it; otherwise not even the exceptional
record of Domesday Book would reveal it adequately.
Nevertheless a great deal did come to be recorded about the systems
on which the peoples of north western Europe were or had been
organised. In the chaos of information recorded at various dates all kinds
of resemblances between different areas occur; for example, in the
present context, between those of Kent and those of the middle Rhine
and between those of East Anglia and those of Frisia.17 It is not difficult to
14
G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots (London 1973) 1-68. It is important
that he has been able to show that the system of 'shires' and 'thanages' in Scotland is
almost certainly older and very possibly much older than the ninth century. His
demonstration of a likely relationship between the 'shires' of N. England and of
Scotland and place names with the element 'eccles' is a powerful reinforcement of the
case of the antiquity of the system.
15
For references to Dr Jones's numerous articles see The Agrarian History of England
and Wales i, pt. ii, ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Cambridge 1972) 265 n. 1. C. Taylor in Anglo-
Saxon Settlement and Landscape (ed. T. Rowley, Oxford 1974) 5-15 surveys recent and
relevant discoveries on the continuity of settlement patterns and of boundaries.
16
For what there is, S. Applebaum in The Agrarian History of England and Wales,
op. cit., 97, 261-2.
17
J. E. A. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England: the Jutes (Oxford 1933); G. C. Homans, The
Frisians in East Anglia', Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd Ser. x (1957-58) 189 ff.
find strands linking different areas which may be of coincidence or of
connection: for example, is it significant that indications of a
conventional valuation of the hide at lOd. can be found in England, that
thegafol rate was often Id. on the hide and that taxation in Merovingian
Gaul was sometimes said to be levied by decimatores?™
Some of what is revealed in late sources may go back to a very distant
period indeed. It is easy (not quite so easy in Ireland) to forget that
institutions which first come to sight in the Dark Ages or later must often
have had centuries or millenia of history behind them, and that
similarities between them may reflect a common and distant ancestry. A
paradigm case of the antiquity of institutions and of their connections
could be that of the hide as Mr Charles-Edwards describes it. His is a
powerful case for regarding it as a very ancient institution and part of a
schematized system or view of society; the 'five hide system' having its
origin in a particular conventionalisation of the family. He maintains that
the Irish evidence shows important resemblances to the Anglo-Saxon
system here, which indicate the survival of a common Indo-European
inheritance.19
Jesting Pilate is the patron saint of these studies. At one extreme the
institutions of 'extensive lordship' in England sketched above could, in
principle, just, bespeak an immemorial continuity little affected by
Roman, let alone Saxon, conquest. At another they could for the most
part simply indicate that German and Celtic peoples had a considerable
inheritance in common and tended to organise themselves in similar
ways. Nevertheless it is very important that it does seem likely that over
much of England there was continuity in certain basic institutions
through the Brito-Saxon period and/or that at the level in question
18
E. W. Robertson, Historical Essays (Edinburgh 1872) 102-4. Robertson's work
seems to have been almost entirely forgotten, except by Professor Barrow. His essays
on 'The Land Gavel' and 'The Shire' in part anticipate and to a considerable degree
supplement the works referred to above (p. 125-6, n. 12, 13, 14). Compare his remarks
on land gavel (loc. cit.) with those of Davis (op. cit. xxxvii-xxxviii) and his references to
early charter evidence from Kent and the W. Midlands suggesting parallels togwestfa (p.
109) with Professor Rees's paper. His remains the best survey of Continental parallels to
systems found in Britain. A particularly important feature of his work is his interested in
mensuration. Customary measures of length and area, the latter often related closely to
systems of social organisation and assessment, provide an important corpus of material
for the study of the early history of Europe which could well throw light on the problems
of'continuity' and of the relationships between recorded history and its prehistoric past.
It is presumably the extreme difficulty of such studies which has led to their relative
neglect in England since Frederick Seebohm, whose work, e.g., on 'The Old British
Mile' (Customary Acres and their Historical Importance (London 1914) 79-94) points to
many potentially fruitful lines of inquiry.
19
Past and Present no. 56 (1972) 3-33.
20
For some salutary remarks on the dangers of carrying 'continuity' too far, G. W. S.
Barrow, Scoff. Hist. Rev. lii (1973) 196.
Anglo-Saxon institutions much resembled those of the Britons. It is
sometimes overlooked how similar the Saxons and the Britons were in
other respects. The economic organisation of Roman Britain was very
different from that of Anglo-Saxon England. But the mastery of basic
tools and techniques was not dissimilar. As carpenter, smith, shipwright
or ploughman, the intruding pagan had little to learn from the native
paganus, not least because Roman tools and techniques were widely
diffused beyond the imperial frontiers in the preceding centuries.21
To consider the organisation of the native peoples of northern Europe
as they emerge into the light of documents, beginning with the Irish
laws, is to discover integrated systems, or the fragments thereof.
German and Celtic peoples were not organised on the basis of a rough
and transient pragmatism. On the contrary, the distribution,
measurement and assessment of land, the graduations of society and the
institutions of government seem to have been, or at least seem once to
have been, related together in elaborately regular ways.21 Into such a
context the regularities which Professor Barrow discerns fit easily. So it
could be that early Anglo-Saxon and Celtic government was more
elaborately organised and had larger possibilities than is commonly,
often tacitly, assumed.
If so, important questions arise about, for example, the Tribal Hidage.
Mr Morris is not among those who push that baffling document to one
side. True to form, first he dates it (with implausible precision) to c. 661
and then faces it head on. He concludes (unsurprisingly) that it is a tribute
list and (more dashingly) that each hundred hides represents a territorial
hundred in the full late Anglo-Saxon sense. It is very unlikely that the
hundred as a unit of jurisdiction is so early. That the hidage is based on
territorial 'hundreds' of assessment was first suggested by W. J. Corbett.
His case depended largely on the important observation that the numbers
of hundreds in the Domesday counties strongly suggest that the hundred
had once had a primary role in assessment which was much diminished,
except in East Anglia, by 1086. He did not claim that this (? tenth
century) assessment was in general that of the Tribal Hidage , but rather
that its having existed increases the likelihood of an earlier and
comparable system. The interest, though not perhaps the a priori
plausibility of his contentions, was increased by wreighty arguments to
show that the total of hides in the hidage for areas outside Wessex was
21
For an example of regularity in a Celtic system of assessment etc. see Dr J.
Bannerman's discussion of Senchus Per nAlban for whose early (? seventh century) date
he makes a powerful case (Studies in the History ofDalriada (Edinburgh 1974) 132-56.) (I
am obliged to Dr R. A. Fletcher for drawing my attention to this.) For an example of
early Saxon systematisation consider the most detailed account we have of how a king
sought to deal with conquered Britons, the laws of Ine, which demonstrate an intention
to dovetail them into West Saxon society on an orderly plan.
144,000 and that the assessment was systematized in multiples and
simple fractions of a unit of 12,000 hides. If he was right, then in the
seventh or eighth century not only were there distinct territorial units
each assessed at a hundred hides, but also these reflected an overall
assessment imposed by an authority having power over most of the
kingdoms.22
It seems too much to believe. It may indeed be too much to believe.
But even before so extreme a case one should hesitate. What seems the
saving power of common sense may be no more than an ignis fatuus, a
simple prejudice against believing that such things could have been at so
early a date. Certainly Anglo-Saxon government and assessment were
very elaborate and orderly by the eleventh century. Much in what then
existed went back to the ninth and tenth centuries, when innovation was
probably extensive and Carolingian example powerful. Nevertheless
much of what is revealed in Domesday Book and in later evidence
antedates Alfred. This must be true of large parts of the systems of
lordship and rural organisation discussed above. It is known to be true of
the hidage assessments of certain estates. Such an early system as
Professor Barrow describes would be consonant with one of territorial
units of assessment such as Mr Morris and Corbett suggest. It could be
that common views of the Anglo-Saxon polity are too much determined
by assumptions that development must have been from the chaotic to the
orderly, from the ad hoc to the schematized and from weaker rule to
stronger.
Such assumptions may be true, but they are not imposed by the
evidence. A different hypothesis is as plausible. This would emphasise
the great capacity for order (though not in the sense of'law and . . .') of
the Celts and the Germans and the strong similarities between them,
owing something to a common Indo-European inheritance, something
to a long Continental relationship. During the Brito-Saxon period (c.
425-c. 650) amid much violence there were slower and more complex
processes of assimilation between Iron Age peoples at what was in many
important respects a similar stage of development. One may suppose
British, Brito-Saxon and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to have had basically
similar structures at the level described by Professor Barrow. These
would have formed the foundation for the exercise of royal power on an
22
Corbett revised his account of the Hidage in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. NS xiv (1900)
187 ff. in Cambridge Medieval History ii, 550-51. The most recent work on the Hidage is
C. J. Hart, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. 5th Ser. xxi (1971) 133 ff. He strengthens the case for
Corbett's 144,000 hides as against J. Brownbill, Engl. Hist. Rev. xxvii (1912) 625 ff. He
makes the interesting, indeed plausible, suggestion that Bede had access to a tribute list
compiled for a seventh century Northumbrian Bretwalda and including at least some non-
Anglo-Saxon parts of Britain. It is likely that seventh century rulers did not draw so sharp
a distinction between German and Celt as historians have done, since Bede.
orderly and extensive basis in ways such as are implied by the laws of Ine.
(This is not incompatible with the bloody tale of the narrative sources for
early Anglo-Saxon history; the history of almost any state can show how
foreign wars and civil disorder can coexist with elaborate and durable
institutions). The institutional foundations of Offa's empire may not
have been essentially very different from those of its Carolingian
neighbour. Late Anglo-Saxon government would appear as the result of
a long development which did not begin with mere chaos in the fifth and
sixth centuries but rather rested on a resilient sub-structure of
institutions, geared to the production of renders and hospitality for
rulers, and partly derived from and partly resembling those which had
been there in Roman times, between and beyond the towns and beneath
the military and bureaucratic superstructure of imperial rule. To suggest
so much is little more than to suggest a particular application of a truism:
that much of the nature and power of Dark Age and early medieval states
must have derived from institutions and habits of mind whose origins
were prehistoric, and in particular from systems for the provision of
services and renders which had become nearly as integral to society as
those for the conduct of feud.
Mr Morris's work is a great encouragement to speculate, that is to say
think again, about his period. He is surely right in maintaining that many
of the idees revues about it are themselves no more than speculations,
swaddled in the prudent language of cautious men and hallowed by
repetition. As a text-book or a work of reference his work is a failure. He
is not the Good King Wenceslas in whose footsteps the neophyte may
safely plod. But the energy and sense of his general approach and the
wonderful fertility of his mind give The Age of Arthur lasting value. All
future work on the period will, or should, be indebted to it.
The study of this period has progressed considerably since the publication of John
Morris's book. An excellent account of the more recent literature is to be found in Peter
Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981). Colin Smith, 'Romano-British Place-Names in
Bede', Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, i (1979), pp. 1-20 meets the need
mentioned (n. 8) above. W. Davies and H. Vierck, 'The Contexts of the Tribal Hidage:
Social Aggregates and Settlement Patterns', Fruhmittelalterliche Studien viii (1974), pp.
224-93 is important for the Tribal Hidage.
8
Early Anglo-Saxon Society

According to Written Sources
Our first sources for social history are the early laws. Three sets survive
from seventh century Kent, one from seventh century Wessex.
Thereafter there is nothing until Alfred's code (871-99) which
ostensibly drew not only on the earlier Kentish and West Saxon laws
but also on a lost code of Offa, king of Mercia (757-96). The laws are
not easy to interpret. They are cryptic in expression, may include
archaic elements, and by no means deal with all social and legal
relationships. One thing they do make obvious: complexity.
Consider the multiplicity of social ranks and the diversity of
relationships in early Kentish society. Freemen are divided into at least
two grades (perhaps into more, for there are four grades of free
widow); below them are three grades of laets; and at the bottom are
slaves, at least the women among these also being divided into three
grades. Two words are used for unfree men, theow and esne, with
overlapping but not necessarily synonymous meanings. Other words
expressing dependent relationships appear: we read of the king's fedesl
and the ceorl's hlafceta; but the meaning of these words is uncertain. In
addition there are references to the king's reeves, smith and messengers,
and to resident foreigners.
The West Saxon code of Ine gives a yet more complicated picture.
From one point of view free society is divided into three: men with
wergelds of 1,200, 600 and 200 shillings. But other distinctions appear.
Among the higher classes we find: i) ealdormen each at the head of a
territorial division, a scir; ii) 'other distinguished councillors'; iii)
scirmen; iv) 'other judges'; v) king's geneats; vi) the geneats of other men;
vii) gesiths apparently with some local authority; viii) king's thegns who
are in some way superior to ix) gesithcund men holding land, who in
turn count for more than x) gesithcund men not holding land; and lastly,
xi) hlafords with authority over gesithcundmen. These descriptions are not
mutually exclusive. But, once the hierarchy derived from royal
authority, from lordship and from landholding is taken into account the
nobility are divided, at a minimum, into ealdormen, men less than they
but exceeding in status ordinary gesiths holding land, gesiths holding
land and gesiths not holding land.
At the lower level of free West Saxon society the predominant figure
seems to be the ceorl, who is presumably the same as the man with a
wergeld of 200 shillings. Apparently in this category are geburs and
131
gafolgeldas, words which are not synonymous, though they may denote
the same men. Furthermore there are five grades of free Britons in
Wessex, besides slaves, traders, smiths, foreigners and the reeves both
of kings and noblemen.
That the laws are difficult to interpret derives in part from their
dealing with rather elaborately divided societies whose relationships
were complicated and possibly being transformed by economic
developments, by lordship and perhaps above all by royal lordship.
The most important men in an early kingdom were those at the head
of a major territorial sub-division. Their status varied with time, place
and circumstances but was part of a continuum between kingship and
nobility. The seventh century kings of Northumbria sometimes put a
relative at the head of the formerly independent kingdom of Deira, and
he was called rex. When Penda of Mercia put a son at the head of a
recently conquered area (c.652) Bede was uncertain whether to call him
rex or princeps. Eighth century Mercia included areas where dynasties
which had once been independent survived in subordination. Their
heads may have regarded themselves as reges but their Mercian lords
regarded them as subreguli, duces or comites. It is often unclear whether
the prindpes who were at the head of some important sub-division of
Mercia were the head of subordinated dynasties or important royal
agents: they may often have occupied a middle ground between the
two. In seventh century Wessex there seem at times to have been
several reges or reguli simultaneously; these were probably members of
the royal family with authority over large areas of the kingdom. It is
likely that over much of England the dominions of the more important
kings were largely divided among subordinate rulers, whose status
varied, but which often had something royal about it. The
complications of this situation are reflected in the extensive Latin
vocabularly used to describe such men. Rex, regulus, subregulus, princeps,
dux, and comes are among the terms which could be employed to
describe men in substantially the same position. Ealdorman is the
commonest English term used. The emphasis in Ine's laws on the
ealdormen being the king's ealdormen, and removable functionaries, may
represent a West Saxon parallel to Mercian efforts clearly to subordinate
such men who may well have all been of royal blood and what others
might have called reges or subreguli. In considering such men, in Wessex
and elsewhere, it is important to bear in mind how open royal succes-
sions were. Kings could be succeeded by very remote cousins and it
seems that, at least in Mercia and Wessex, a small share of royal blood
could justify a nobleman in 'striving for the kingdom' and in holding it,
if he could seize it.
The Vita of St Guthlac (who died in 714) gives an account of the early
life of a nobleman with royal blood which sheds light on important
aspects of the life of the nobility. As a child Guthlac was, we are told,
Early Anglo-Saxon Society 133
good, even holy. But in adolescence his disposition was changed. He
gave himself up to warfare, gathered round himself 'comrades from
diverse races', revenged himself on his enemies, plundered widely, and
for nine years led a successfully violent life. He then became devout and
gave up such excitements. It seems to have been common for young
men of high birth to spend their early adult years as Guthlac did. He led
a retinue of his own, whether he went with it in the service of greater
men is not clear. Others certainly entered the service of kings, not
necessarily their own kings. Just as Guthlac recruited comrades of
diverse races so did Oswine (king of Deira 642 or 644-651) gather in his
retinue noblemen 'from almost every kingdom'. Young noblemen
were sometimes prepared to go overseas to take service. What they
probably sought above all was a successful and rich lord, who would
give them gifts. It was a world in which the gift of treasures, and of
weapons, which counted as treasures, was of great importance as the
sign of honour and success and the bond of service. An indication of
this is given in the Penitential of Theodore (c. 700) when it states that if
someone who has been converted from the world has a royal specie
(probably meaning treaure here) from a living king, it should be at the
king's disposal. There are indications that in his twenties a nobleman
would expect to be given land by his lord, would marry, and, although
remaining bound to military service when required, would no longer
serve in the continuous company of his lord.
To say even so much is to run into the danger of that spurious
precision which comes from over-generalisation with selected details.
The safest course is to delineate not knowledge, but ignorance. Our lack
of knowledge comes under three main heads: the size and graduations of
the noble class; the importance or otherwise of office-holding; the nature
of noble land-tenure.
No one has any precise idea of what proportion of the population was
in some sense noble. That there were distinctions between noblemen
may readily be seen, for example, from what is said above about the laws
of Ine. How extensive our ignorance is may be realised from the dispute
about whether St Cuthbert was noble or not: some saying he cannot have
been noble because he looked after his father's sheep when he was young;
others that he must have been noble because he had a horse and a spear.
We know that there were many graduations within the nobility; but how
great the social and economic gap was between, for example in Wessex,
an ealdorman and a gesithcund man not holding land was we do not know,
though we may guess it to have been very substantial.
The problem of office-holding is equally intractable. Certainly there
were, even in the seventh century, offices to be held in royal
households. Oswald of Northumbria (634-42) had a minister whose
duty it was to relieve the poor. Aethelthryth, queen of East Anglia had
a primus ministrorum et princeps domus. The courts of such potentates as
me, Aethelbald and Offa must have had officers for various functions,
but we know little of them. Our sources mention royal officers of one
kind and another: reeves, judices, exactores and the like but we know
little that is precise about these nor whether they were noble. The
essence of the difficulty is that the nature of the government of the
English kingdoms in the seventh and eighth centuries is not
understood. If, as is possible, English government differed from
Carolingian in the eighth century chiefly in the extent to which its
records have not survived, then in considering noble careers we may
have to think more of administrative functions than is usual.
The most acute difficulties of all arise in relation to noble tenure of
land. The main problem can be simply outlined. No source tells us
whether noblemen could hold land by hereditary right without a
charter. All that we know is that by c. 730 Northumbrian noblemen
were setting up bogus monasteries in order to get chartered rights to
land and that from the reign of Offa some noblemen received rights of
ius perpetuum by charter. Inevitably there are two schools of thought.
One maintains that early noble land tenure was entirely precarious, or
anyway only for life, until noblemen, by fair means or foul, began to
gain perpetual rights by charter. The other maintains that it is contrary
to all probability that noble families should not have had hereditary
lands from an early date and that while some lands may have been held
precariously from kings, others must have been transmitted within
families. Faced by meagre sources, wide possibilities, and the likelihood
that the tenurial arrangements of the period were highly complex, it is
hard to do more than to reserve judgment. It is plain, however, that
some members of the class ofprindpes at least claimed perpetual tenure,
for they claimed to be able to confer it. That attitudes towards land
were different from what they were able to become in later centuries is
plain from the laws of Ine envisaging circumstances in which a
nobleman would leave his land.
If our knowledge of the nobility is scanty and confused, that of the
peasantry is derisory and worse confounded. It naturally follows that
learned controversy has been extensive and sustained with an
assertiveness which owes more to the passions of battle than to the
possibilities of the evidence. One extreme point of view is that the basis
of early Anglo-Saxon society was the free ceorl with a holding which
may have been as much as a hide (up to 120 acres); those at the opposite
pole maintain that the peasantry were for the most part unfree, or much
subordinated. The contemporary evidence is sparse in the extreme. In
Kent the ceorl has a wergeld one-third of that of the eorl. Many of the
laws made no differentiation between eorl and ceorl, and both classes have
a direct connection with the king in that he receives a fine if any freeman
is killed. The ceorl has a fine to protect his peace, it is anticipated that he
may have slaves and dependants. We are told nothing about his
agricultural activities. If the ceorl is the ordinary Kentish peasant, then
the impression given by these laws is that he probably was of
considerable status. But then we have to consider the Icets, of whom we
know nothing except what had to be paid for killing them; and the
unfree. The laws afford no means of telling whether Kent was a
kingdom largely in the hands of free ceorls or on the contrary, whether
it was for the most part divided into great estates cultivated by Icets and/
or by slaves and esnes.
The laws of Ine give rather different, but still no more conclusive,
glimpses of the ceorl. He has the peace of his house protected. He owes
military service to the king, of how important a kind we do not know.
He can be under a lord who is responsible for his good conduct or who
can tell him to work at any time. He may share a common meadow
with other ceorls and hire a yoke of oxen in return for fodder. He may
hire land from a lord, who may seek services as well as rent from him,
but is only entitled to them if he provides a dwelling as well. That is
nearly all that these laws tell us about the West Saxon ceorl. They give a
general impression that he was more subordinated and had a lower
status than his Kentish counter-part. They show that ceorls could be
strongly under the authority of a lord (not necessarily that all or most
were). They are interesting in showing them involved in contractual
relationships. They cannot tell us how proportionately numerous ceorls
were, how much land they held or to what extent they were cultivating
the land of their lords.
If the contemporary evidence for the agrarian arrangements of
society is so scanty, can later evidence help? Once extensive evidence is
available, that is to say from the time of Domesday Book (1086)
onwards, the wide variety and many regional variations of agrarian
organisation are apparent. At the very least the contemplation of so
much complexity and diversity reminds one how complex the society
from which all this had ultimately developed may have been and how
vain the effort must be to seek to reconstruct the agrarian world of early
England from twenty sentences, often ambiguous, in the early laws.
Very important in the evidence from the eleventh century onwards is
that which suggests that important elements in institutions of agrarian
lordship in much of northern England were of pre-Saxon origin, and
that similar institutions, whether of such origin or not were to be found
elsewhere in early England. There is no space here to provide more
than a concise summary. It appears that the basic unit of government
and exploitation was quite often an area, roughly of the order of a
hundred square miles, but varying with the nature of the country,
centred on a royal vill. All free inhabitants owed some services and dues
to that vill, the services being of a non-servile kind, and the dues
partaking of the nature of a uniform rent. The area concerned could be
an agrarian unit in so far as it had common grazing. Within it there
were sometimes or generally particular villages which were more
strictly bound to the lord and owed heavier services. It is thought that
linked with this system were the so-called multiple estates, those
consisting not of one contiguous tract of land, but rather of a main
centre with subordinated parts scattered often at a considerable
distance. If there is much which is not entirely demonstrable in these
suggestions there is much that is plausible, however surprising, in the
attempt to link what is described in Domesday Book and later sources
with what existed at a very early date. They are at the very least a
warning against seeking to oversimplify as we imagine early Anglo-
Saxon arrangements and against assuming that all the institutions of
early English society were imposed or developed by the Saxons in
Britain rather than adopted there. And it is helpful to be reminded, for
example, that close agricultural subordination may be characteristic,
not so much of whole classes scattered over the country as of particular
villages within a complexly organised estate.
If our texts tell us little about peasants they reveal less about those
who undertook non-agricultural tasks. A crucial question here is: what
did slaves do? Inter alia, household tasks for the great, doubtless. The
preparation of food for numbers such as could have been
accommodated in the great halls found at Yeavering with kitchen
equipment such as that found at Sutton Hoo would have required large
domestic staffs, presumably unfree. The references to grinding-slaves
in the Kentish laws are a reminder of how costly in labour milling must
have been until mechanical mills were introduced. (We do not know
when that was but it may be significant that two of the earliest examples
known are at royal centres, Tamworth and Bamburgh.) What else did
slaves do? Above all were they artisans? The laws reveal a little about
smiths: that they were valued and that a lord had his smith almost as a
matter of course; but not whether they were free or not. We know even
less of other artisans. It could have been that many were slaves and that
the production and distribution of manufactured goods was a function
of lordship. When Bede tells us of Wilfrid's manumitting 250 servos et
andllas at Selsey, c. 678, it is imprudent to assume, as some have done,
that these were largely engaged in agriculture rather than forming the
domestic and artisan staff of a large estate centre. It is easy to find other
important questions about the non-agricultural employment. For
example, what was the status of men who boiled the salt of
Worcestershire or mined the lead of Derbyshire? As so often, for precise
answers there has to be substituted a general suggestion: that the non-
agricultural elements in the economy may have been particularly
important to the great and powerful and particularly dependent on
slave-labour.
At all levels of society there were strong elements of instability. In
the case of the noble class this is most strongly seen in the prevalance of
exile. The openness of royal successions and the prevalence of feud
ensured that exile was a common incident in the life of a man of high
blood. A very high proportion of the kings of the period of whose lives
we have any detailed knowledge were at some time in exile: for
example, Edwin, Oswald, Oswy and Aldfrith of Northumbria,
Caedwalla of Wessex; Sigbert of East Anglia, Aethelbald of Mercia.
These exiles ultimately became kings; many others must have been less
successful. Guthlac was in exile in Wales for a time. Exiles are come
across in the sources in such contexts as an attack on the monastery of
Oundle by a body of exiles 'ravaging because of some harm done to
them'. When a great man went into exile he might take his comitatus with
him.
It is likely that many men, from various ranks of society, were on the
loose and driven to live as best as they could. We learn of 'poor men'
who crowded round the court of Oswald in Northumbria, awaiting his
charity. This suggests the possibility of there having been elements in
society unprovided with land. Even for those who had land it might
not suffice. Bede describes a famine in Sussex in the 670s which was so
severe that men joined hands in groups of thirty and forty and jumped
off the cliffs rather than starve any longer. The prevalence of feud and
the very heavy penalties laid down by the laws probably drove many
into exile. Wanderers presumably often lived by crime. Certain areas
were regarded as haunts of robbers. The laws of Ine are conspicuous in
their efforts to check marauders. When Cuthbert lay dying he was
anxious that he should not be buried at Lindisfarne. He knew this
would lead to its becoming a sanctuary and he was afraid of the effect
on the monastery of the numerous bad characters who would
congregate. Other men may have moved about England not through
necessity but from choice. Some may have followed their lords when
they took service in kingdoms other than their own. How far the wars
and conquests of the early period were accompanied by large-scale
movements it is not easy to tell. It is likely that migration on at least a
moderate scale accompanied the wide extension of the areas under
English control in the seventh century but such movements leave no
trace in the written sources unless in the form of place-names: for
example Conderton in Worcestershire means 'settlement of Kentish
men', though we do not know when it gained the name. For further
light on internal movements we must look to archaeology. What the
written record does suggest is that there may have been much
movement over long distances in short periods and that the
archaeological record should be as much one of men being attracted
towards centres of power as of their moving out from them.
Slavery must have been a powerful source of insecurity in early
Anglo-Saxon society. We do not know how many slaves there were, but
there is good reason to suppose that enslavement was an ever-present
risk. In war, though noble captives were probably killed, non-nobles
were enslaved, as were women. At least in the sixth and seventh centuries
such captives were often sold abroad, though the church made efforts
to stop this. When Bede described a vision of hell the image which
came to his mind was that of captives being led off into slavery, the
crowd mocking round them. When Aidan was a missionary in
Northumbria he bought some of his first converts. There are frequent
references in the laws to penal slaves, (literally fine-slaves). It is likely
that men got into this position by being unable to pay a fine or other
composition. The penalties laid down by the laws appear to be in
general high. Even a 200 shilling ceorl's wergeld or a 60 shilling fine for
cutting down a big tree or for theft was very heavy when 100 shillings
was, for wergeld purposes, counted as a slave, a coat of mail and a
sword. A slave was counted as at least notionally worth 60 shillings and
there are indications that a 60 shilling fine could be counted as
alternative to or even synonymous with enslavement. In such
circumstances a man must often have been dependent on his kin if he
was to avoid enslavement (they could indeed ransom him after he had
become a slave). It appears that there were circumstances in which men
might sell their children into slavery, or sell themselves, for a period of
years or perhaps permanently. It was a society full of risks at all levels.
It was also a society full of changes. It is these which the scattered and
imperfect nature of our sources make it hard to deal with. We can, for
example, be certain that the spread of Christianity in the seventh
century brought with it extensive changes, not least those wrhich
derived from the foundation before the end of the century of numerous
monasteries. These may have included even changes in the economy;
for it is a question how far the church was responsible for the
introduction of new techniques, as for example, we find Wilfrid
introducing improved methods of fishing in Sussex in the 670s. That
the period saw extensive transformations of the economy is highly
probable; in particular the use of silver coin in some areas from the late
seventh century onwards may have been of great importance, in the
development both of society and of government. In the laws of Ine a
smith is a man who in some way belongs to a lord. In those of Alfred
two hundred years later he is a business man dealing with his clients.
This apparent change may be characteristic of many which took place
as money and markets grew in importance. The written sources are not
such, by no means such, as to enable us to discern neat patterns of
development, or even to construct firm outlines. They give a certain
amount of light, sometimes a bright flash, more frequently a dim
flicker, in a darkness which for long periods and large areas is all but
complete. The safest impressions to take from them are of great
complexity and fairly rapid changes.
9
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns
To begin, as is natural, by considering the sedes episcopates of early

England is to realise how little we know of its significant places -even to
use the word 'town' is to beg a question. It is certain that some sedes were
established at major centres of authority. Bede used metropolis to describe
London and Canterbury and by that he meant the capital of a kingdom. l
Gregory the Great was probably wise in selecting London as the seat of
an archbishop, an intention in which he seems to have persisted even
after he was informed of English conditions.2 Not only was it the capital
of a kingdom but it had geographical advantages which Canterbury
could not rival. Even though Canterbury was established as the
archbishops' sedes there are indications that already from the seventh
century they were using London as a meeting place, and perhaps as a
dwelling place, at least on occasion.3 No major council of the early
English church was held at or near Canterbury. 4 York's position in the
north probably resembled that of London in the south. Our view of it has
been transformed by Phillips's excavations, which have shown that the
great headquarters building of the legionary fortress was maintained and
used, at least in part, until well after the conversion period.5 This
discovery is a reminder of how much Romanitas may have remained and
fits with what used to seem odd, that according to Bede Paulinus was
able to start building a fine stone church at York (as also at Lincoln),
which implies he found masons.6 Other excavations, those of Biddle,
have done much to illuminate one further sedes, Winchester, which
appears to have survived as a centre of authority, but not of population
1
[Ed C. Plummer,] Opera Historica, 2 vols (Oxford 1896) I pp. 46, 85.
2
D. Whitelock, Some Anglo-Saxon Bishops of London (London 1974) p. 4 n 3.
3
ibid p. 9 n 4 for archbishops of Canterbury consecrating bishops at London in 676
and 838-9 and for ninth-century councils there. Some eighth century councils were
held at Chelsea, nearby. Boniface thought Augustine had held a synod at London, Die
Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius and Lullus, ed M. Tangl (Berlin 1955) p. 84. However
suspect Eddius's account of Theodore's summoning Wilfrid and Eorconweald to him it
is significant that it is to London he says they were summoned, Eddius [Stephanus. Het
Leven van Sint Wilfrid, ed H. Moonen] ('S-Hertogenbosch 1946) cap 43 p. 148.
4
Unless some unidentified meeting place or places was in that area.
5
This derives from a paper read by Mr Phillips to an Anglo-German archaeological
colloquium at York in September 1977.
6
Opera Historica 1 pp. 114, 117. The Lincoln church is now thought to have been
discovered. The Times (26 July 1978) pp. 1, 2.
139
(though the presence of something in the nature of a palace there in the
early period remains to be demonstrated). 7 It is likely that others of the
fifteen sedes of before 900 which have been definitely located were
similarly centres of authority for wide areas. Worcester was described in
the eighth century as the metropolis of the Hwicce8; such a place as
Leicester may have had the same kind of significance.
But the location of sedes was not necessarily at major centres with a
Roman past. Bede gives a clue to why this was so when he complains that
kings have given so much land away that non facile locus vacans ubi sedes
episcopalis nova fieri debeat inveniri valcat.9 It seems that to him a sedes
episcopalis meant something like an estate sufficient to sustain a bishop.
This agrees with Eddius's account of how Lichfield came to be the sedes
of the Mercian bishopric in 669. It was, he said, a locus which Wulfhere
had given to Wilfrid to be a sedes for himself or someone else and which
Wilfrid gave to Chad.10 What made Lichfield suitable may be guessed
from Domesday Book which shows it as the centre of a vast multiple
estate.11 Similarly with Selsey, which was a royal vill to which eighty-
seven hides were attached.12 Such sedes as Sherborne and Hexham were
not improbably of the same type.
Recent research has emphasised the importance in early England not
so much of towns as of centres of authority for units of government of
the 'small shire' or lathe type for multiple estates.13 It is becoming
increasingly clear that all or most of England had a network of such
places. They were not towns but significant places. Their relationship to
the church is important; for it was at such places that minsters tended to
be built. For example Miss Deanesly showed the relationship between
the minsters and the lathes of early Kent, and a relationship with
governmental arrangements (sometimes very old) is apparent in the
minster system as it appears in partial decline in Domesday Book.14 Bede
mentions the construction of a major church at a local centre of royal
7
M. Biddle, 'Felix Urbs Winthonia', Tenth Century Studies, [ed D. Parsons]
(London/Chichester 1975) pp. 125-7.
8
W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols. and index (1885-89), i no. 166.
Hereafter CS.
9
Opera Historica I p. 413 (Letter to Egbert).
10
Eddius cap 15 p. 92.
11
VCH Staffordshire 4 pp. 8-10 (though the estate may have been enlarged after the
eighth century).
12
Eddius cap 41 p. 144.
13
G. R. J. Jones, 'Multiple Estates and Early Settlement', Medieval Settlement,
Continuity and Change, ed P. H. Sawyer (London 1976) pp. 15-40; G. W.S. Barrow,
The Kingdom of the Scots (London 1973) pp. 7-27.
14
M. Deanesly, 'Early English and Gallic Minsters', TRHS 4 ser 23 (1941) pp. 15-
40; [W.] Page ['Some Remarks on the Churches of the Domesday Survey'],
Archaeologia 66 (London 1914-5) pp. 61-102; [F.] Barlow, [The English Church 1000-
1066] (London 1966) p. 184.
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns 141
authority as early as the time of Edwin when at his villa regia of
Campodonum the king built a basilica.15 The late ninth-century
translator of Bede rendered his description of Aidan's journeyings per
cuncta et urbana et rustica loca as j>urh mynsterstowege purhfolcstowe.16 He is
indicating the distinction which seemed important to him, not so much
one between town and country, as between important local centres of the
kind where minsters were built and ordinary places. His distinction is
important in the history of the early church in England. It could not be an
urban church but, as it developed under the aegis of kings, so its pattern
of authority echoed theirs and where the villa regis, the royal tun, was,
there, more often than not, the minster was; and there often enough, in
later centuries a real town grew up.
It is a question how far in the early period the church helped to create
towns. It may have been that in a sense some of the communities most
resembling towns were major monasteries. When Ceolfrith left
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow in 716 there were over six hundred milites
Christi there apart from those he took with him. 7 For many centuries a
population of three hundred would have been enough for a small town
and no secular settlements in the early period can be proved to have
been so populous (though doubtless at least a handful were so). A
monastery such as Whitby, with its numerous buildings, its crafts and
its maritime contacts must have been considerably more like a town
than were most places.18
An important meeting-place for the urban and the ecclesiastical
historian is the graveside of the great. The importance attached to burial
in particular places throughout the Anglo-Saxon period enables us both
to identify centres and to see means whereby piety could attract
population to them. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle shows a steady
interest in places of burial, and that bodies were often take a long way.
Thus after the fight between Cynewulf and Cyneheard in 757 the
former was taken to Winchester for burial, the latter to Axminster.19 In
871 the body of a ealdorman who was killed at Reading was transported
to Derby to be buried.20 The gilds of the late period provided for the
transport of deceased members' bodies to their chosen burial places; at
Abbotsbury there was a distance limit, sixty miles.21 It was customary
15
Opera Historica I p. 115.
16
The Old English Version ofBede's Ecclesiastical History, ed T. Miller, pt I, EETS 95
(1895) p. 161.
17
Opera Historica I pp. 400-1 (anonymous life of Ceolfrith).
18
R. J. Cramp, 'Monastic Sites', The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, [ed D. M.
Wilson] (London 1976) pp. 223-9, 453-7, 459-62.
19
Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed J. Earle and C. Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford
1899) I p. 48.
20
The Chronicle ofAethelweard, ed A. Campbell (London 1962) p. 37:
21
Diplomatarium [Anglicum Aevi Saxonici, ed B. Thorpe] (London 1865) pp. 607,
611.
to make a substantial legacy to one's burial-place. With this often went
provision for the poor. The earliest evidence is a grant by the
ealdorman Oswulf to Christ Church, Canterbury, c. 810. He provides
for 1,120 loaves to be distributed annually on the anniversary of his
death 'as is done on the anniversaries of lords'.22 About twenty years
later a priest called Waher mentioned similar provision for the
anniversary of archbishop Wulfred's death. One thousand two hundred
poor men were to be fed, each was to be given bread with cheese or
bacon and a penny.23 Such practices continued in the later period. For
example, in 1015 Athelstan provided for a hundred poor men to be fed
at Ely on St Ethelreda's day.24 If, as is likely, there were many such
benefactions a great religious centre must have had considerable power
to attract population, perhaps especially the poor such as we find
crowding round Oswald, or huddled at a monastery door.25 The
prestige of a sanctuary could attract the less deserving. Cuthbert feared
that his burial at Lindisfarne would lead to incursionem profugorum vel
noxiorum.26
Provision for the distribution of pennies to twelve hundred men is an
important indication of the early circulation of coin and of the extent to
which the economy developed before 850. Much greater development
took place in the next two centuries. It is strikingly demonstrated in the
extensive growth of towns. By 1066 possibly about a tenth of the popu-
lation lived in towns. The major provincial towns were of the same order
of size as in the later middle ages. Urban manufactures flourished in an
economy in which silver coin circulated abundantly. The last Anglo-
Saxon centuries may have seen economic changes on a scale not paralleled
till the eighteenth.
The transformation of the church in the towns in the late Anglo-
Saxon period was as notable as the economic changes which
accompanied and influenced it. The impact on towns of reformed
monasticism was various but often of a second order kind. At
Winchester not only did the West Saxon kings create a real and
22
Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed F. E. Harmer
(Cambridge 1914) pp. 1-2, 39-40; cheese or something of the sort was to go with the
loaves.
23
CS I no 402.
24
D. Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge 1930) no xx.
25
Bede, Opera Historica I p. 138; Aethelwulf, De Abbatibus, ed A. Campbell (Oxford
1967) p. 38.
26
Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed B. Colgrave (Cambridge 1940) p. 278.
27
M. Biddle, Towns', The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 120-41; H. R.
Loyn, Towns in Late Anglo-Saxon England', England before the Conquest: Studies in
Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (Cambridge
1971) pp. 115-28; Q.] Campbell, 'Norwich', [The Atlas of Historic Towns, ed M. D.
Lobel] 2 (London 1975) pp. 5, 7-8; J. C. Russell, British Medieval Population (Albuquer-
que 1948) p. 305.
prosperous town where previously there may have been only a centre
of government, they also created a holy city within it, where the New
Minster stood just beside the Old Minster, the one grandly built, the
other grandly rebuilt, with a west work probably over a hundred feet
high; immediately opposite stood a royal nunnery.28 Canterbury
remained what it had been, a church town, and one to which kings
went but rarely. It must have depended very largely on the wealth of its
two great monasteries; and by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period that
was great indeed, together their landed incomes were of the order of a
quarter of that of the crown.29 Bury Saint Edmund's was by 1086
certainly a considerable, perhaps a major, town; a major addition had
been made to it since 1065 by abbot Baldwin.30 Winchester,
Canterbury and Bury were extreme cases. Worcester and Gloucester
were the only other towns of much note which had Benedictine abbeys
at the Conquest. Some other abbeys, notably Saint Alban's, had
attempted to stimulate urban growth beside the abbey but without
Bury's success.31 The chief connection between urban growth and
monastic reform was probably this, that reformed monasteries were
very expensive. They required rich patronage. That it was available
probably owed much to a prosperity in which towns played a large
part. It may be significant that much of what Ethelwold received seems
not to have been land, but rather gold and silver with which he bought
land.32
The important religious communities in most towns were not
Benedictine monasteries, but minsters of secular priests. Though
important, they are not well-documented. The surviving sources
generally amount to a handful of enigmas, separated by large empty
spaces. The evidence for Saint Frideswide's at Oxford is unusually rich:
two charcoal burials (probably ninth century), a reference in an early
eleventh-century tract, a charter of Ethelred II indicating fairly
extensive land-holdings round Oxford, mention of the canons in
Domesday and a cock-and-bull origin story from William of
Malmesbury which may retain a faint residue of fact.33 That is all, until
Saint Frideswide's was made over to Augustinian canons under Henry
I. Yet, as Stenton argued, the community may indeed have had a very
long history and considerable importance; its tithe claims suggest a
28
Biddle, 'Felix Urbs Winthonia', Tenth Century Studies pp. 127-38.
29
D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, (2nd ed Cambridge 1966), pp. 702-3;
F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London 1970) pp. 153-4.
30
[M. D.] Lobel, [Bury St Edmunds] (Oxford 1935) pp. 4-13, 12.
31
VCH Hertfordshire 4 p. 67.
32
Liber Eliensis, [ed E. O. Blake] Camden Soc. 3 ser 92 (1962) pp. 75, 80, 82, 84, 89, 91.
91.
33
F. M. Stenton, 'St Frideswide and her Times', Oxoniensia I (Oxford 1936) pp.
103-12; T. G. Hassall, Oxoniensia 28 (1973) pp. 270-4.
connection with the big royal manor at Headington nearby.34 In
considering the growth and development of Oxford in the tenth
century it is impossible to tell whether or when Saint Frideswide's was
a focus or on the contrary a backwater. More characteristic, because less
well-evidenced, is Cirencester. A major and very ancient demesne
centre, one would expect there to have been an important minster
there. There is no mention of any such thing in any pre-Conquest
source. Yet there was one; it has been found under the remains of the
Norman church and was a hundred and seventy nine feet long.35 Often
our first reference to a minster conies in Domesday. It is, however,
nearly demonstrable that minster communities could be omitted from
the survey.36 This makes Hill's argument that Saint Mary's Lincoln,
was a major minster with extensive rights in the late Saxon period the
more plausible; 7 and imposes a certain caution in deducing too much
from Domesday's failure to mention a minster community at, for
example, Norwich. As often in Anglo-Saxon history we know enough
to realise there was more than we know.
Still, we do know that urban minsters were numerous. Some, as was
probably the case with Saint Frideswide's, were old and ante-dated the
town with which they were associated. Others were new. The most
obvious example was the New Minster at Winchester, though there the
canons were not allowed many generations in which to enjoy their
comforts. Saint Oswald's, Gloucester, was probably founded early in
the tenth century by Ethelred and Aethelflaed, who moved the body of
Saint Oswald to it from Bardney.38 It is not certain how far the burh
building of Alfred and Edward was accompanied by the foundation of
new minsters. In Ethelred II's reign the fortification and occupation of
South Cadbury for no more than ten years was accompanied by
preparation for the erection of what may have been intended to be an
impressive church.39 The appearance of minsters in such a Danelaw
town as Derby suggests foundation or refoundation in the tenth
century, though the discovery of a splendid ninth century coffin at one
of them, Saint Alkmund's, indicates at least continuity of site.40 A
34
The authenticity of the clause in the charter of 1004 relating to tithe is questioned:
D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents I p. 546.
35
[H. M] Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 3 (Cambridge 1978) p. 751.
36
Domesday Book does not mention canons at, for example, Great Paxton or
Worksop but there is evidence for them somewhat later: C. A. R. Radford, 'Pre-
Conquest Minster Churches', Archaeological] J[ournal] 130 (London 1973) p. 133; C.
Brown, 'Foundation Charter of Worksop Priory', Thoroton Society 9 (Nottingham
1905) p. 85.
37
Q. W. F.] Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge 1965) pp. 64-73.
38
VCH Gloucestershire 2 p, 84.
39
L. Alcock, 'By South Cadbury is that Camelot . . .' (London 1972) pp. 198-200.
40
VCH Derbyshire I pp 87-8; R. A. Hall, The Pre-Conquest Burh at Derby',
Derbyshire] Archaeological] J[ournal] 94 (Kendal 1974) p. 18.
considerable number of northern and Midland churches later claimed a
tenth-century founder.41 There are instances of towns with more
minsters than one: for example Derby, Shrewsbury, Chester,
Gloucester (where besides Saint Oswald's there was Saint Peter's,
which was not monastic until the eleventh century); Hereford, beside
the cathedral minster of Saint Ethelbert, had another, Saint Guthlac's.
The urban minsters of late Anglo-Saxon England were numerous
and diverse. Many had formed part of fairly orderly systems of
ecclesiastical authority corresponding to those of secular government.
Some retained some of what this had given them (Saint Mary's Derby
is a case in point) 42 but many must have lost much of what they once
held. Some were small and poor, others large, rich and nobly built. For
example recent work indicates that Saint Oswald's at Gloucester had
very considerable buildings.43 It would have been very much a shrine to
West Saxon success. That no source earlier than Wendover even
professes to record where Offa was buried is an indication of Mercian
failure and of how that failure must have carried minsters down with
it.44 Wherever Offa actually was buried it must have been in what was
at the time a powerful minster. Many minsters may have had residual
rights and residual memories from regimes long toppled.45 Others
were new; and that they continued to be founded is a warning against
accepting too easily that they were institutions without a future. It is
true that they were threatened in various ways. Monastic reformers cast
pious and greedy eyes on lax ways and substantial estates. Minster
property was coming to be exploited to maintain great royal servants.
In the towns, even more than in the country, the proliferation of
parishes threatened the substance of'old minster' rights. Still, relatively
few were monasticised. A number survived the middle ages with the
select status of royal free chapels.46 Some survived as ordinary secular
colleges. A considerable number were made over into houses of
Augustinian canons in the twelfth century. In Edward the Confessor's
England communities of priests, doubtless often married and often
hereditary, were very important in some towns. The thirteen canonici
prebendarii, alias presbyteri de burgo of Saint Mary's Stafford must, if
41
[A.] Hamilton Thompson ['Notes on Secular Colleges of Canons in England,
ArchJ74(l9\7)p. 142].
42
VCH Derbyshire I p. 310; The Cartulary of Darley Abbey, ed R. R. Darlington,
Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (Derby 1945) I p. liv; A.
Saltman, The History of the Foundation of Dale Abbey', DAJ 87 (1967) p. 25.
43
Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 3 p. 1073.
44
R. Vaughan, Mathew Paris (Cambridge 1958) p. 191.
45
Blythburgh in Suffolk could be a case in point if there was substance in the
twelfth-century contention that Anna king of the East Angles was buried and still
venerated there, Liber Eliensis p. 18.
46
J. H. Denton, English Royal Free Chapels (Manchester 1970).
resident (and certainly they had been intended to be, for Domesday
shows them with a messuage each) have formed a conspicuous element
in a small town.47 In very many towns such bodies if they did not
weigh as once they had must still have counted for something.
The most remarkable thing in the church in towns before the
Conquest is the multiplication of parishes. This growth was recent,
probably reaching its peak in the eleventh century, and ceasing in the
twelfth; and it was on the largest scale.48 Norwich, the only major
town for which Domesday provides a comprehensive figure had a
minimum of forty nine churches and chapels by 1086.49 London must
have had more and some other major towns cannot have been far, if at
all, behind. It is certain that many of these urban churches were, or had
originated as, private chapels and that many, but not all, were very
small.50 Why was it that in the towns, and in particular (though by no
means only) in the great eastern towns, of England there was a church
on every corner?
First, as Brooke points out, this is the urban aspect of something
more general. The proliferation of churches in East Anglian
countryside was as marked. It is unlikely that there was any rural area in
medieval Europe where parishes were so small as in parts of Norfolk.
By the time of Domesday East Anglian village churches were very
numerous; some villages had more than one.51 It is interesting that the
contemporary Adam of Bremen describes something similar in
Denmark: there were, he says, three hundred wooden churches in
Scania alone.52 One simple explanation for the proliferation of churches
is important. People needed space to go to church in. The smallest
urban churches were tiny: one at Winchester was thirteen feet by
sixteen and the average size cannot have been great.53 Even fifty
47
VCH Staffordshire 4 pp. 22-3. The recorded population of the town was a
hundred and sixty six. If this figure was accurate one household in thirteen was that of a
canon.
48
[C. N. L.] Brooke, [The Church in the Towns, 1000-1250'], Studies in Church
History 6 (1970) pp. 59-83; [C. N. L.] Brooke and [G.] Keir, (London 800-1216: the
Shaping of a City] (London 1975) pp. 128-48; [A.] Rogers, ['Parish Boundaries and
Urban History'], Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3 ser 35 (London 1972)
pp. 46-64 are the most important recent studies.
49
D[omesday] B[ook seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi Regis Angliae, ed A. Farley], 2
vols (London 1783) pp. 117-18; Campbell, 'Norwich' pp 3, 23-4.
50
[M.] Biddle and [D. J.] Keene, ['Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries', Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: an Edition and Discussion of the Winston
Domesday, ed F. Barlow, M. Biddle, O. von Feilitzen and D. J. Keene] (Oxford 1976)
pp. 329-35, 498-9.
51
Page pp. 85-6.
52
L. Musset, Les Peuples Scandinaves au Moyen Age (Paris 1951) p. 144.
53
Biddle and Keene p. 334; Medieval Archaeology 18 (London 1974) for a church in
York little larger; T. G. Hassall, Oxoniensia 39 (1974) for a church in Oxford converted
from a domestic building. In a Suffolk village the construction of a chapel beside the
cemetery of the mother church was explained on the ground that the latter could not
churches may have been hardly enough for such a place as Norwich,
where more, perhaps many more, than five thousand people lived. As,
again. Brooke, to whom I owe much, points out, the founding of new
churches was the fruit not only of an impulse from below but a failure
of authority above in that one church can be created only at the expense
of another.54 Brooke suggests that the failure was to some extent
personal, by the default of absent or negligent bishops, and to some
extent institutional. One cannot be totally happy about the hypothesis
that Stigand's deficiencies extended to a neglect of his own interests; as
the proprietor of two churches in Norwich he must have been well-
acquainted with the problems.55 That there were institutional reasons is
probable. The institutions which had most to lose by the proliferation
of new parishes were the head minsters. It is probable that the most
likely explanation for the dearth of early charters from East Anglia will
serve also to explain in part the abundance of late churches there; that
the minsters had been destroyed or weakened by the Danish
invasions.56 Thus, that Domesday shows much fainter traces of an
orderly minster system in the east as against the west would indicate as
much the cause as the consequence of extensive church foundation.
There were, of course, very numerous churches in some western
towns. But at least in Winchester they seem generally to have lacked
rights of burial and sometimes even of baptism. 57 Third, Brooke
emphasises simple devotion and the extent to which pious groups of
craftsmen clubbed together to build themselves a neighbourhood
church. One has only to look at the surviving gild regulations to see
how devout late Anglo-Saxons could be. Some of the Winchester
churches were associated with gilds and gild halls. Attempts to stop
eating and drinking in churches suggest that the churches themselves
may sometimes have fulfilled the functions of halls, perhaps in
particular for funeral feasts.58
They had other public functions also. Certain kinds of ordeal were
held in churches; and a post-Conquest tract says that a man accused of
theft was to be kept in a church from the Tuesday before the Sunday
when he took the ordeal.59 It is a question how far churches were used as
hold the whole parish, DB 2, p. 281.

54
Brooke pp. 76-7.
55
DB 2 p. 116. Stigand may possibly have been a Norwich man, Barlow p. 78 n 1.
56
Though there are indications in Norwich that Edgar's law on the division of tithe
between an old minster and a new church may have been applied, Barlow p. 195;
Campbell, 'Norwich' p. 4 n 12.
57
Biddle and Keene p. 332.
58
Ancient Laws [and Institutes, ed B. Thorpe] (London 1840) p. 397; Die Hirtenbriefe
Mfrics, ed B. Fehr (Hamburg 1914) pp. 24-5.
9
M. Deanesly, The Pre-Conquest Church in England (London 1961) pp. 332-3; [F.
Liebermann, Die] Gesetze [der Angelsachsen], 3 vols (Halle 1898-1916) I p. 417 (dated by
him to 1066-dl50).
courts and meeting-places. There is abundant evidence for their being so
used in the medieval period. Earlier it is harder to find. Eadmer says that
the south porch of Canterbury cathedral was used as a court 'where pleas
were settled which could get no solution in hundred or shire or the royal
court'. A reference in the Leges Edwardi to proprinquiorem ecdesiam ubi
indicium regis erit is suggestive of a connection between churches and
justice.61 Certainly in the early twelfth century the joint county court of
Norfolk and Suffolk sometimes met in one of the churches of the French
borough.62
Churches had a part to play at the point where commercial
transactions met the law. Bishops were supposed to have a responsibility
for weights and measures.63 It is understandable that manumissions of
the unfree should take place in church 'on the altar' but when slaves are
sold 'at the church door' that is another matter and probably indicates a
connection between the church and proper legal form.64 A connection
between priests, churches, trade and public order appears particularly
clear in a passage in the Leges Edwardi relating what is to happen when
anyone claims to have found cattle or property. He is to bring it before
the church and then to summon the priest and the reeve.65 This was a
society in which the priest is a natural link between authority and his
flock. The priest who was summoned to come with the reeve and six
men from each vill to give evidence in the Domesday inquiry was
fulfilling one of his normal roles.66 There may have been much work for
him to do in towns.
But he had, of course, his living to make. Some urban priests received
tithes and it was at least hoped that 'shipmen' would pay a tithe on their
gains.67 Others had livings which were virtually unendowed. One
manuscript of the taxation of 1254 lists not only 29 churches in Norwich
which were taxed but adds that there are other churches in Norwich not
taxed propter benefidorum exilitatem and goes on to list twenty-eight of
them. Many priests, if their church had burial rights, must have
depended heavily on funeral dues. The image of ravens swooping on a
60
R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge 1963) p. 242.
61
Gesetze I p. 633 (earlier twelfth century but probably often reflecting pre-
Conquest law).
62
Saint Benet of Holme, ed J. R. West, Norfolk Record Society (Norwich 1932) nos
120, 178, 217.
63
Ancient Laws pp 426-7.
64
Diplomatarium pp. 642-9, 628.
65
Gesetze I p. 649.
66
W. Stubbs, Select Charters (9 ed Oxford 1951) p. 101.
67
Brooke and Keir pp. 126-7; Rogers p. 50 n I; Ancient Laws p. 484 (an Old English
version of the Capitula of Theodulf of Orleans).
68
W. Hudson, 'The Norwich Taxation of 1254', Norfolk Archaeology 17 (Norwich
1910) p. 106.
corpse was one which twice occurred to Aelfric in this connection.69
Wulfstan of Worcester's biography tells of those who would not christen
a child without payment. 70 We do not know how far being a parish priest
was normally a full-time job. They were forbidden to act as traders or
reeves, which suggests that they did.71 This was a society which would
probably have seen nothing remarkable in a priest undertaking ordinary
work; for the compatibility of orders and marriage may have ensured not
only that most clergy were married but that some men were clergy who
had no intention of being ministers. There almost certainly were far
more clerics than there were benefices. In Bury St. Edmunds in 1086
thirty priests, deacons and clerks were among the inhabitants of the three
hundred and forty-two new houses in the recently built extension to the
town. 72
Most town churches, like most other churches, were property which
could be bought and sold.73 Churches seemed quite often to have been
owned by priests and they may often have been in the nature of family
businesses. One extremely interesting passage in the Domesday
account of Lincoln shows an intention, perhaps a system, for keeping
ownership within the community. A Lincoln man had given the church
of All Saints to the abbey of Peterborough on becoming a monk there.
All the burgesses of Lincoln declared that such a grant could not be
made outside the city or the family without royal consent.74
This concern to exclude outsiders contrasts with the appearance of a
marked tendency in the latest Anglo-Saxon period towards the use of
churches as sources of profit not simply by landowners but by distant
pluralists. In a degree there was nothing new about this; great religious
houses had long owned far-off churches and minsters. What may well
be new is the appearance of such a figure as Regenbald, whom Round
called 'the first great pluralist'. Regenbald is well enough known, not
least because of the controversy as to whether he was the Confessor's
chancellor. He was in any case a very important clerk in Edward's
service, so important that he was granted some of the status of a
bishop. He swiftly attached himself to the Conqueror, receiving writs
in 1067 which secured his property and gained him more. We know the
extent of what he was given before and after the Conquest chiefly
because Henry I used his possessions to endow a house of Augustinian
69
Ancient Laws p. 462; K. Jost, Die 'Institutes of Polity Civil and Ecclesiastical' (Berne
1959) pp. 97-9.
70
The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed R. R. Darlington, Camden Soc. 3
ser40(1928)pp. 12-3.
71
Ancient Laws p. 462.
72
Lobel p. 12.
73
For example p. 150, n. 80 below.
74
Barlow p. 193.
canons at Cirencester in 1133.75 A high proportion consisted of
churches. Regenbald held nineteen churches, all, like the rest of his
property, in the south and west. Twelve of these were sufficiently
important to have one or more subordinate chapels. Several were at
places of note: Cirencester itself (where he was almost certainly head of
the college of secular canons), the market towns of Frome and
Milborne Port in Somerset, both important demesne centres, and
Cookham and Bray, similarly important centres. At two of the places
where he held benefices, Cookham and Cirencester, Domesday says
there was a new market. At Cirencester there was a college of canons;
Cookham and Cheltenham had at one time been the seat of monastic
houses of some kind and so possibly had Frome.78 In short, what the
prospering Regenbald had been given was to a large extent churches
associated with the royal demesne, often minsters, and naturally often
at centres of local importance. Other royal clerks were similarly
endowed, though none apparently on quite the scale of Regenbald. 9
Such clerks were prominent at court from the middle generations of the
eleventh century as they never seem to have been before. Probably they
were the men who ran Edward's administration, and their rewards
were commensurate with its not inconsiderable virtues. The active
nature of their interest in ecclesiastical property is brought home in the
Domesday entry which shows a royal chamberlain buying the church
at Huntingdon from two of the king's priests and then selling it again.80
Thus in the Confessor's England among the currents in the distribution
and creation of ecclesiastical property there were two which were in a
degree opposite. While old churches at centres of royal authority (often
places which, if they were not towns were not ordinary villages either)
were passing into the hands of distant pluralists, the new churches
which were being created in major towns, especially in the east, seem
chiefly to have been held by local men.
Such currents could frequently change their directions. Minster
75
[C.] Ross, [The] Cartulary [of Cirencester Abbey], (Oxford 1964) prints (no 28/1)
the foundation charter and refers (pp. xix, xxi-xxii, xxv-xxv-xxviii) to the literature on
Regenbald. J. H. Round, 'Regenbald the Chancellor', Feudal England (London 1909)
pp. 421-30 is fundamental.
76
Ross, Cartulary no 575 and Round's article on him in DNB.
77
The Domesday Geography of South West England, ed. H. C. Darby and R. Welldon
Finn (Cambridge 1967) pp. 200-1, 204, 209; The Domesday Geography of South East
England, ed H. C. Darby and E. M. J. Campbell (Cambridge 1962) p. 281; The
Domesday Geography of Midland England, ed H. C. Darby and I. B. Terrett (Cambridge
1954) pp. 20, 49.
78
D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses in England and
Wales, (2nd edn., Cambridge 1971) pp. 470, 471, 473.
79
Barlow pp. 129-37; J. H. Round, 'Ingelric the Priest and Albert of Lotharingia',
The Commune of London and other Studies (London 1889) pp. 28—38.
80
Barlow pp. 192-3.
communities probably found Edward the Confessor's and William I's
new clerks as much of a threat as Edgar's new abbots had been. One
might have supposed that such institutions as Cirencester (in which
Roger of Salisbury had an interest after Regenbald), Christchurch
(Twyneham) and Saint Martin's, Dover (in both of which Flambard
had his claws) would have faded away. In fact all three were
transformed into Augustinian houses.81 So too were a number of other
secular communities, not least in towns. The urban parishes, whose
extensive creation had been an indication of burgess independence, also
went in a new direction from the early twelfth century. To a large
extent they passed into ecclesiastical ownership: for example, by 1200,
the bishops of Lincoln and of Norwich held a high proportion of the
churches which once had belonged to the priests and burgesses of those
QO
cities.
In the Confessor's time there had been no bishop in either Norwich
or Lincoln. It is an important question why so many of the Anglo-
Saxon sedes remained in minor places. Only one of their pre-Conquest
moves was to an important town: that from Crediton to Exeter. 3 A
partial explanation for so many sees remaining in places which by 1066
were relatively unimportant was that the urban growth which made
major towns very different from lesser had often been fairly recent.
Norwich may well have been much more like North Elmham in 950
than it had become by 1050. Another is that it was not necessarily
inconvenient for a bishop to live in the country: at their country manors
was precisely where many medieval bishops spent most of their time.
Perhaps above all, a move of the kind which was made to Norwich or
Lincoln could not have been accomplished without powerful royal
support expressed in ways which might have seemed difficult or
inconceivable to an Anglo-Saxon king. To construct the equivalent of a
continental cite episcopate at Norwich Herbert Losinga had to clear a
substantial part of the town. To support a cathedral monastery on the
scale he envisaged endowments exceeding those of the see of Elmham
were essential. 4 Similarly the new see and cathedral of Lincoln were
extensively endowed by means which involved the gift of a good deal
81
DB I fols 1-2, H. H. E. Craster, 'A Contemporary Record of the Pontificate of
Ranulf Flambard', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4 ser 7 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1930) p. 47,
MRHEW pp. 154, 470, VCH Hampshire I, p. 152. For valuable remarks on the
conversion of minster communities to Augustinian, [M.] Brett, [The English Church
under Henry /] (Oxford 1975) pp. 138-40.
82
Hill, Medieval Lincoln pp. 141-5; F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An Essay towards
Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, II vols (London 1805-11) 2 pp. 75, 91,
105, 116, 118, 126, 137, 145, 238, 255, 272, 299, 353, 367, 423, 429, 438, 439, 443, 466,
475 (2), 484.
83
Barlow pp. 208-31 gives a most thorough acount of the sees and their moves.
84
Campbell, 'Norwich' pp. 8-9 and the works there cited.
of ecclesiastical property and a willingness to treat burgesses high-
handedly.85 Particularly interesting is Henry I's gift to bishop Robert of
all the, apparently numerous, churches which the burgesses held of the
king.86 Such moves of sedes as these were not just a matter of deciding
to take a sensible practical step. They involved heavy expenditure,
royal support, and the transformation of the cathedral establishment.
They also involved the building of enormous new churches. The
problem of how far these were needed, apart from being thought
appropriate, raises other questions about the relationship in Anglo-
Saxon times between bishops and towns, and between mother churches
and their dioceses. The first lively glimpse we get of life in Norwich
comes from the life of Saint William of Norwich and relates to
Stephen's reign. It mentions two events in 1144 relating to the
connection between the cathedral and the diocese. One is a diocesan
synod, treated as if it were a matter of course.87 The medieval diocese of
Norwich contained more than one thousand three hundred parishes. It
is a fair guess that a very high proportion of them were there by 1100. If
^thelmer, the last Saxon bishop of Elmham, had thought fit to hold a
diocesan synod (as some of his contemporaries did), and all his clergy
had come, where could he have put them? The other regular diocesan
event mentioned in 1144 is Absolution Sunday when 'the penitents of
the whole diocese were accustomed to assemble in crowds in the
mother church'. The streets were said to have been packed with them.88
This event may well have been a Norman innovation.89 It is a question
how far the religious life of men living at some distance was involved
with their cathedral church in the Anglo-Saxon period. There are
indications at Exeter that it could be. The records of the Devonshire
village gilds associated with the cathedral are of 1072-1103, but they
may very well describe pre-Conquest institutions. As far away as
Bideford men had been adopted into association by the bishop and
canons, were making small annual payments to them and were
rewarded by the canons 'performing such service as they ought to
perform'.90 (It may be significant that this was a cathedral which had
been moved to a major town and whose chapter had been reformed
before the Conquest.) Those looking to a cathedral in such a way are
85
For example, VCR Bedfordshire I pp. 196-7; VCH Buckinghamshire I pp. 223-4,
281; VCH Derbyshire 2 pp. 87-8; Hamilton Thompson, op. cit., pp. 155-6; C. W. Foster
and K. Major, The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, i (Horn-
castle, 1931) nos. 10, 19, 33-36.
86
Hill, Medieval Lincoln pp. 144-5.
87
The Life and Miracles of Saint William of Norwich, ed. A. Jessopp and M. R. James
(Cambridge 1896) p. 43.
88
Ibid p. 26.
89
Brett pp. 162-4.
90
Diplomatarium pp. 608-10; Barlow pp. 196-8.
likely to have wanted to come to it. The piety of the day may have
expressed itself in devotion to, and in, great churches as well as small.
Indeed, the more home churches became very local and so very small,
the more people may have felt the need at least occasionally to attend
grander establishments. Small churches may well, as Brooke suggests,
have led to an intimate relationship between priest and people, but one
defect of a church sixteen feet by thirteen is that you cannot put on
much of an ecclesiastical show in it.91 So, perhaps the gigantic nave of
Norwich cathedral and the swarms of new small parish churches in East
Anglia were complementary.
The relationship between the English church and English towns was
affected for many centuries afterwards by what had happened in the
Anglo-Saxon period. Many early arrangements and rights were long
perpetuated, largely thanks to twelfth-century developments in canon
law and to the Reformation, which long preserved the ecdesia anglicana
from Roman rationalisers. The effects of the distant past are to be seen
in large towns and in small. For example the famous ministry of W. F.
Hook in Leeds was possible because when he was presented in 1837
almost the whole of the city comprised one vast parish. The great size
of the parish was probably due to Leeds having been a major
ecclesiastical centre at a very early date; it has recently been
convincingly argued that it was the Campodunum where Edwin built
the basilica.9 That it was not divided reflects the great difficulty found
in creating new parishes in England between the twelfth century and
the nineteenth. A curious instance of the effect of the Anglo-Saxon past
on the history of a small town is that of Hadleigh in Suffolk. Hadleigh
has a moderaely conspicuous role in Anglican history: Rowland
Taylor, the martyr was its rector (1544-55); so too was David Wilkins
of the Concilia (1719-45); and so too was Hugh Rose who in July 1833
held there the 'conference' which had some significance in the rise of the
Oxford movement.93 That there was something very remarkable about
Hadleigh can be seen from its revenues. In the early nineteenth century
its tithes were commuted for an annual charge of £1,325.94 It was not
only a very rich living, but a Canterbury peculiar which formed part of
the exempt jurisdiction of the deanery of Bocking. The association with
Canterbury antedates the Conquest and may go back to a grant from
Byrhtnoth the hero of the battle of Maldon. Its ecclesiastical history
may be taken back further yet. One of the few valuable fragments in the
91
Brooke (1970) pp. 80-1.
92
See note 15 above. I owe this identification with Campodunum to a so far
unpublished paper by Miss Margaret Faull.
3
H. Pigot, 'Hadleigh', Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology (Ipswich
1863) pp. 30-81.
94
Ibid p. 79.
95
Hist. Mss. Commission Eighth Report p. 322.
twelfth-century Annals of Saint Neot's records that Guthrum, the
Danish king of East Anglia, was buried in 890 at the vilia regia of
Hadleigh.96 The importance of Hadleigh in the history of the church
derives in the end almost certainly from its having been an important
royal church under the East Anglian kings; with its revenues being
preserved and coming into the gift of the archbishops of Canterbury.
When one considers the threads which link the Saxon church with later
centuries there is a certain symbolic weight in the fact that among the
churches held by Regenbald, who served the Confessor so profitably
and came so quickly and effectively to terms with the Conqueror, was
Bray.
96
Asser's Life of King Alfred together with the Annals of Saint Neots, ed W. H. Stevenson
(new impr Oxford 1959) p. 140.
For the church of St Paul-in-the-Bail, Lincoln (p. 139 above) now see B. Silmour, The
Church of St Paul-in-the-Bail, Lincoln'. Medieval Archaeology, xxiii (1979), pp. 214-8. In
regard to Hadleigh (p. 153 above) reference should have been made to A. Hoffman,
Backing Deanery (Chichester, 1976). C. N. L. Brooke, 'The Medieval Town as an
Ecclesiastical Centre. General Survey', in European Towns. Their Archaeology and Early
History, ed. M. W. Barley (1977), pp. 459-74 is an important survey.
10
Observations on English Government from

the Tenth to the Twelfth Century
Prudent historians, when they consider the ordered power of the late
Anglo-Saxon state, are apt to indulge a professional instinct, to hedge
their bets. Such phrases as 'specious uniformity' and 'rudimentary
precocity' have found favour.1 It has long seemed likely, and it has by
now become certain, that such caution is superfluous.
Some of the most solid, and the earliest, evidence for a powerful and
elaborate system of government in England has been provided by recent
investigation of the forts of the 'Burghal Hidage'.2 Nearly all thirty-three
have been identified. It has been shown that some are very big, enclosing
over eighty acres. Their earthworks were massive and sometimes
revetted with timber. The lengths of the fortifications often correspond,
sometimes closely, to those which may be deduced from the 'Burghal
Hidage' by using its formula of a hundred and sixty hides to the furlong.
So Alfred, or he and his son, not only built a vast system of fortifications,
but also devised elaborate means of serving them, of which the 'Hidage'
is the record. By the beginning of the tenth century West Saxon kings
were capable of a feat of government on the largest scale.
The coinage from the end of Edgar's reign demonstrates how
successfully the English could manage a system of great sophistication.
Its main characteristics have been generally known since 1961.3 An
abundant silver coinage was kept under complete royal control. Every
six or seven years (later every two or three) a new type was issued and
previous types were then normally demonetized. The evidence of hoards
is that such demonetizations, involving the frequent replacement of a
coinage of millions of silver pennies, were very thorough, though less so
in the Confessor's reign. Not the least remarkable feature of the system
was that a new type might be lighter, or heavier, than its predecessor,
sometimes markedly so. Historians have been inclined to boggle at what
numismatists show them to have existed here. Their difficulty is that of
making sense of the evidence without attributing more sophistication
1
F. Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom of England (London, 1955), pp. 42, 46; V. H.
Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford, 1961),pp. 46, 47.
2
C. A. Ralegh Radford, 'The Later Pre-Conquest Boroughs and their Defences',
Medieval Archaeology, xiv (1970), pp. 83-103, and the articles cited there.
3
R. H. M. Dolley and D. M. Metcalf, 'The Reform of the English Coinage under
Eadgar', Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. R. H. M. Dolley (London, 1961), pp. 136-68.
155
than seems plausible. The evidence is nevertheless such as to render the
implausible irresistible. The English kings were running the earliest
known, and the best, example of the system of renovatio monetae which
by 1200 had come into use in many states from Poland to Portugal. 4 A
ruler could use a currency controlled in this way to bring in profits
exceeding those of simpler systems. The currency became a means of
taxation and subjects wrould sometimes, as in Aragon in 1236, grant
heavy property taxes to be rid of renovatio monetae.5
For the best results it was desirable that there should be a close
connection between the monetary and fiscal systems. A passage
(possibly interpolated) in Dialogus de Scaccario supports the supposition
that in England the Crown insisted that all payments to itself should be
in coin of the current issue.6 Such a requirement would not only help to
enforce the demonetization of old types; it could also provide the
Crown with the means to play 'heads I win, tails you lose' by, for
example, at some times requiring payment by weight and at others by
tale. The variety of methods of payment, by tale, by weight and
blanch, recorded in Domesday suggests the possibility of such a
system. Its presence would accord with Miss Sally Harvey's suggestion
that the payments in an ora of 20d., rather than of 16d., recorded from
royal demesne in Domesday represented the means whereby the king
averted loss when the weight of the penny was reduced from about 21.5
gr. to 17 gr. in c. 1062.7 A converse explanation may account for the
great increase in the weight of the penny, from 18 gr. to about 26 gr., in
c. 1051. Various explanations have been offered for such increases. For
example, the wish to 'avoid the creation of a bullion reserve of
embarrassing magnitude'.8 Or, in the case of the increase under
discussion (granted a likely connection with the suspension of the geld
and the standing down of the fleet) that Edward 'calculated that fewer
coins would be needed and decided that the opportunity should be
taken to produce a heavier coin which would give enhanced prestige'. 9
It seems more likely that the heavier coin was a substitute for the tax,
4
H. Bertil A. Peterson, Anglo-Saxon Currency. King Edgar's Reform to the Norman
Conquest (Lund, 1969). Cf. A. Suchodolski, 'Renovatio Monetae in Poland in the Twelfth
Century', Wiadomsci Numizmatyczne, v (1961), pp. 57-75 of the supplement and C. S. S.
Lyon, 'Variations in Currency in Late Anglo-Saxon England', Mints, Dies and Currency,
ed. R. A. G. Carson (London, 1971), pp. 101-20.
5
S. Bolin, 'Tax Money and Plough Money', Scandinavian Economic History Review, ii
(1954), pp. 5-21, esp. p. 17.
6
Ed. C. Johnson (London, 1950), p. 9; on the assumptions that instantis monete (last
line) means 'of the current issue' and that the chronology is, as elsewhere in the Dialogus
(cf. p. xx), unreliable.
7 S. Harvey, 'Royal Revenue and Domesday Terminology', Economic History
Review, 2nd ser., xx (1967), pp. 221-28.
8
M. Dolley, The Norman Conquest and the English Coinage (London, 1966), p. 10.
9
F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), pp. 183-84.
Observations on English Government 157
and intended to increase the value to the Crown of payments by tale.
The late Old English coinage system was probably highly
remunerative. If it is true that Ethelred II did not introduce a hidage tax
until c. 1012, it may have been his new system of exploiting the
currency which did most to enable him to buy off the Danes.10
'The Anglo-Saxon financial system, which collected the Dane-geld,
was not run from a box under the bed.' 11 Indeed, it demonstrates the
power of the state. A powerful instance of the fiscal system at work has
been provided by Dr Hart in an analysis of a reassessment of
Northamptonshire carried out between a date probably not long after
the Conquest and 1086.12 The assessment was not only reduced, but
also reallocated between hundreds. This reallocation was such as to
restore a balance among the hundreds which had existed at the time of
the 'County Hidage', but had since been upset by a reduction of the
burden on some hundreds, but not on others. The restoration of the
earlier balance required the reduction of the hidages of different
hundreds in different proportions: in some in the ratio 2:1; in others 5 :
2; in others 9 : 31/2; otherwise in yet others. What must have been a
central decision and plan was executed in an elaborate and orderly way
at the local level.
Few financial documents survive which are older than Domesday
Book. Of these the Northamptonshire Geld Roll is the most important.
In addition Miss Harvey has shown that Domesday was preceded by,
and partly dependent on, hidage lists, some of them arranged as it is,
and some older than the Conquest. Such records are known to have
been kept in the Treasury with Domesday. 13 Otherwise there is very
little.14 But it is likely, as Galbraith suggests, that late Old English
administrative documents were numerous, and that nearly all have been
lost, partly because they were commonly in English, as the
Northamptonshire Geld Roll is.15 Miss Robertson's collection of
charters in Anglo-Saxon contains some twenty documents which are
not charters, agreements, or records of law-suits, but public and private
administrative records of other kinds. Though few, they are very
varied: a list of services for the repair of a bridge;16 a memorandum on
10
Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle, (Oxford,
1892), p. 173.
11
V. H. Galbraith, Studies in the Public Records (London, 1948), p. 45.
12
C. Hart, The Hidation of Northamptonshire (Leicester, 1970), esp. pp. 39-43. It
seems reasonable to take such a post-Conquest instance as indicative of English
practice, especially as the key document, the Northants Geld Roll, is in English.
13
S. Harvey, 'Domesday Book and its Predecessors', English Historical Review,
Ixxxvi (1971), pp. 753-73.
14
But cf. pp. 177-8 below.
15
Studies in the Public Records, pp. 37-40.
16
Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1956), no. LII (possibly
post-Conquest).
the recruitment of a ship's crew in Ethelred II's time;17 estate lists and
surveys;18 lists of treasures;19 stock inventories;20 the
Northamptonshire Geld Roll; the 'Burghal' and 'County' hidages. The
chances for the preservation of such documents were poor. The best lay
in their being copied into a cartulary, as the Northamptonshire Geld
Roll was. But cartulary-making became widespread only in the twelfth
century. Only one pre-Conquest cartulary survives and only two
others of before 1100.21 Many of the documents are of types which are
not found in Latin in the Old English period. It is reasonable to deduce
that those collected by Miss Robertson are indeed the survivors from a
much larger number and that English was the ordinary language for
much written business.22
The use of written English went with a considerable degree of lay
literacy; no doubt as both cause and effect, ^thelweard's translation of
the Chronicle was the first book written by an English nobleman and,
for nearly four centuries, the last.23 Two of Îfric's theological treatises
were written for thegns.24 The relative abundance of inscriptions, not
only on churches but also on, for example, brooches and rings, is
suggestive.25 A layman who learned to read in the Confessor's reign
would be able to make out his father's will, the king's writs, the
boundary clause of a charter, or a monastery's inventories. In Henry II's
day mere literacy would have won him none of these advantages. If he
wanted them he had to learn Latin. There is no doubt that some did
so;26 but it would be unwise to be confident that they were more
numerous than those who were literate in English a century or more
earlier. If the late Anglo-Saxon state was run with sophistication and
thoughtfulness this may very well be connected with the ability of
many laymen to read.2
It would be tediously easy to multiply instances of the power of the
late Old English kings. Nothing is more remarkable about them than
the long series of innovations which they introduced and the power of
17
Ibid., no. LXXII.
18
Ibid., nos. LIV, LXXXIV, CIX, CX and App. I and IV and V, for which see pp.
50-51 below.
19
Ibid., nos. XXXIX, CIV and App. II nos. II-IX. Cf. p. 49 below.
20
Ibid., nos. XXXIX, CIV, App. II nos. Ill, IX and cf. J. Earle, Hand-Book of Land
Charters and other Saxonic Documents (Oxford, 1888), pp. 275-77.
21
G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (London, 1958), pp. xi-xii.
22
Cf. Professor Dorothy Whitelock's suggestion on the survival of letters in English,
English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 (London, 1955), p. 577.
23 But see H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England
(Edinburgh, 1963), p. 273.
24
Whitelock, English Historical Documents, p. 849.
25
E. Okasha, Hand-list of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1971).
26
Richardson and Sayles, op. cit., pp. 265-84.
27
Cf. Galbraith, Studies in the Public Records, p. 57.
experiment and of creation so displayed. The shires of the Midlands,
the hundredal system, the burghal system, planned towns, Danegeld
and the currency reveal a capacity for change and for order hardly
matched until the nineteenth century. Those who find themselves
unable to believe that this was so draw attention to, for example,
inequalities in the taxation system and provincial differences in law and
administration. But such inefficiencies and variations appear in fact to
have been less marked than they were in most of the states of Europe in
the eighteenth century.
Prima facie the Dark Age state most readily comparable with the
English is that of the Carolingians. The best account of the relations
between them remains that of Stubbs.28 He pointed out the numerous
and obvious similarities which suggest direct connection. Carolingian
counties and centenae with their courts bear a resemblance to those of
England which extends to matters of detail. The earl like the count took
a third of the profits of justice. Danegeld in England is preceded by
similar taxes in Francia. Prescriptions which appear in ninth century
Carolingian capitularies reappear in tenth century English laws. He
also drew attention to the dynastic and other relationships which would
have enabled one area to influence the other. Nevertheless he warned
that 'the parallels between Frank and English law must not be pressed
without allowing for the similarity of circumstances which prompted
them and the fundamental stock of common custom and principle
which underlay them'. His conclusion was masterly: 'it is wiser and
safer to allow the coincidences to speak for themselves, and to avoid a
positive theory which the first independent investigator may find
means of demolishing'.
For a generation after Stubbs the question was regarded as open. For
example, Maitland took it for granted that Danegeld might have a
Carolingian origin . 30 But in 1912 Helen Cam published her M.A.
thesis, addressed to the question Stubbs had raised. She concluded that
in reply to the question: ' "Did the West Saxon kings borrow from the
Carolingian emperors?", we can only reply that it is possible, but
hardly probable.'31 Her evidence hardly justified her conclusion, not
least because she gave virtually no consideration to Stubb's suggestions
on, for example, Danegeld, general oaths and the relationship between
English laws and Prankish capitularies. At the same time Liebermann's
Gesetze were appearing and his inclination was to find early or common
28
W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, i (Oxford, 1891), pp. 223-27.
29
To the instances cited ibid., p. 226, add those mentioned on pp. 45-47 below and by
J. Yver, 'Les premieres institutions du duche de Normandie', Settimane di studio del centra
italiano sull'alto medioevo, xvi (Spoleto, 1969), p. 319. Some capitularies and some Anglo-
Saxon 'codes' resemble one another fairly closely in general form.
30
F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897), p. 518.
31
H. M. Cam, Local Government in Francia and England (London, 1912), p. 156.
Germanic origins for institutions where he could, while he was only
marginally concerned with some of the relevant evidence. The strange
consequence has been that for sixty years the question of the
relationship between English and Carolingian institutions has been only
rarely and barely considered. In seeking the origins of English
institutions scholars have preferred to look north and to later texts,
rather than south and to earlier. For example, Dr Richardson and
Professor Sayles suggest a Scandinavian origin for the earl's third
penny, referring to the Heimskringla, even though the count's third
share is a well-known Carolingian institution.32
Stenton wrote of the Danegeld that it was 'the first system of national
taxation to appear in western Europe' and that 'as a piece of large scale
financial organisation it has no parallel in the Dark Ages'.33 In fact on
several of the twelve or thirteen occasions when large payments were
made to the Danes in Francia the money was raised by national taxation
which, if it was more complex than Danegeld, nevertheless in some
respects resembled it. 4 For example in 866 Charles the Bald levied 6d.
on every mansus ingenuilis, 3d. on every mansus servilis, Id. on every
accola and on every two hospitia. He required all free Frnks to pa y the
heribannus and merchants a tenth of their possessions. 35 (the levies on
y have applied only to lands held as benefices or even only
to monastic lands so held. 6) It seems that the mansus indomicatus was
generally exempt from such taxes, suggesting comparison with the
exemption of manorial demesne in England.3 The existence of such
Carolingian taxation does not prove that English Danegeld has
Prankish origins. But it is at the very least in sufficiently strong contrast
to Stenton's statements to suggest that even one of the most eminent of
English historians could lose sight of what happened beyond the
Channel.
Undoubtedly evidence for direct connection is to be found in the
coinage. It is generally agreed that the introduction of a penny coinage
into England in the eighth century and the extension of royal authority
over the coinage in the ninth and early tenth centuries reflect and partly
depend on Carolingian policy.38 For example when Athelstan
introduced a penalty for false coining it was the unusual one of striking
32
The Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 26, n. 1; F. L. Ganshof, Prankish Institutions.
under Charlemagne (Providence, R.I., 1968), p. 29.
33
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1971), pp.645, 648.
34
E.Joranson, The Danegeld in France (Rock Island, 1923).
35
Ibid., pp. 72-73; cf. pp. 45-58, 62-92.
36
F. Lot, 'Les tributs aux Normands et 1'eglise de France au ixe siecle', Bibliotheque de
VEcole des Chartes, Ixxxv (1924), pp. 58-78.
37
Joranson, op. cit., p. 191; R. Welldon Finn, An Introduction to Domesday Book
(London, 1963), p. 254.
38
M. Dolley, Anglo-Saxon Pennies (London, 1964), pp. 14-15.
off the hand, which is required for the same offence in the capitularies. 39
The most remarkable feature of the later development of the English
coinage, the successive demonetizations, also had Carolingian
precedent. On several occasions between the time of Charlemagne and
that of Charles the Bald an emperor gave orders for the demonetization
of previous types in favour of a new one.40 The edict of Pitres, 864,
gives detailed instructions on how such a demonetization was to be
accomplished.41 There is evidence that it was attended with some
measure of success.42
There are other points of resemblance between the English and
Carolingian systems where the evidence suggests something more than
common origins and common needs. The earliest is an instance of
English inflence on the empire. When Charles the Bald introduced
compulsory work on fortifications, which was well-known in
England, but not in Gaul, he did so, he said, iuxta antiquam et aliamm
gentium consuetudinem.43 In the next century the case for English kings
having Prankish precedent in mind when they established the hundredal
system is strengthened by the word 'hundred' itself. Many of the
features of the system appear newr in England, but some of them had
appeared earlier across the Channel.44 No instance is known before the
tenth century of the word 'hundred' (or of any word, in English or
Latin, meaning a numerical hundred) being used in England to denote a
unit of government or of jurisdiction. 45 The argument from silence
carries weight here because we have so many early laws. It was on the
Continent that such words were used to denote governmental divisions
not dissimilar from later English hundreds. 46 Before the tenth century
the English do not appear to have had either the institution or the name.
39
Yver, 'Les premieres institutions du duche de Normandie', op. cit., p. 343, nn.
109, 110. Prankish moneyers were at work in the Danelaw in the late ninth and early
tenth centuries, M. Dolley, Viking Coins of the Danelaw and of Dublin (London, 1965),
pp. 17-20.
40
K. Morrison and H. Grunthal, Carolingian Coinage (American Numismatic
Society Notes and Monographs, no. 158, 1967), pp. 1-8.
41
Capitularia Regum Francomm, ii, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause (Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Legum, Sectio II (Hanover, 1890)), pp. 314-18.
42 Morrison and Grunthal, op. cit., p. 6.
43
N. Brooks, The Development of Military Obligations in Ninth and Tenth
Century England', England before the Conquest, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes
(Cambridge, 1971), p. 81.
44
H. R. Loyn, 'The Hundred in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries', British
Government and Administration, ed. H. R. Loyn and H. Hearder (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 1-
15, esp. 2-3; H. Dannebauer, 'Hundertschaft, Centena und Huntari', Historisches
Jahrbuch, Ixii-lxix (1942-49), pp. 155-219, esp. pp. 163-65.
45
F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ii, pt. ii (Halle, 1912), p. 516.
46
In important aspects and areas the centena may have been an innovation of
Charlemagne's time: Loyn, op. cit., pp. 2-3; Ganshof, Prankish Institutions under
Charlemagne p. 32; B. Guerard Le Polypytque de I'abbe Irminon (Paris, 1844), i, pp. 43-44.
The case for the institution, when it appears in the tenth century,
having been developed under Continental influence is supported by the
adoption of a corresponding name.
There is similarly a good prima facie for direct connection in regard to
general oaths. The first possible reference to such an oath in England
appears in Edward the Elder's Exeter code which refers to 'the oath and
pledge which the whole nation has given' in a context which has to do
with the prevention of theft.47 Athelstan's fourth and fifth codes refer to
an oath or oaths in a similar context 'given to the king and his
councillors' and 'given at Grateley'.48 In c. 943 Edmund's Colyton code
gives the text of an oath by which 'Omnes', were to swear fidelity to
the king, 'sicut homo debet esse fidelis domino suo'.49 From Cnut
comes the famous requirement that every man above twelve years 'take
an oath that he will not be a thief nor a thief s accomplice'. It is not
clear how these references to oaths should be related together. But it is
clear that they can be so related by considering them in comparison to
what is known of Carolingian oaths. Charlemagne introduced or
reintroduced the general oath in 789, taking elaborate precautions in
792 or 793 to ensure that every adult male above the age of twelve took
it. In 802 a new text for the oath was introduced. All were to swear '. . .
fidelis sum, sicut homo per drictum debet esse domino suo'. There was
another general oath taking and the instructions to the missi make it
clear that the oath was regarded as one not to engage in any unlawful
activity.51 There is no certain reference to a general oath in England
before Edmund, while it had a much older history in Gaul. There is an
important textual resemblance between the core of Charlemagne's oath
and the core of Edmund's. The age limit mentioned by Charlemagne
and Cnut is the same. Granted then that all the English references make
sense if taken as referring to an oath of the Carolingian type, it would
seem that in the absence of definite proof the onus should lie on those
who maintain that we do not see here a Carolingian institution
imported into England.
Such an importation would not be surprising. The dynastic and
cultural relationships between England and the Carolingian world were
close from at the latest the later ninth century. In the age of Alfred and
Charles the Bald, Asser, Grimbald and Hincmar the nexus of
47
F. L. Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (reprint, New York,
1963), p. 121.
48
Ibid., pp. 149, 153.
49
A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I
(Cambridge, 1925), p. 12. The text is preserved only in a later Latin version.
50
Ibid., p. 185.
51
F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy (London, 1971), pp.
112-17.
relationships between the successful West Saxon and the struggling
Carolingian realms was sufficient to ensure that many of the
achievements of Alfred and his circle must be placed in a Carolingian
context. Alfred's biography is exactly in the tradition of Carolingian
royal biography. 52 The Chronicle recalls the Carolingian royal annals.5
Professor Wallace-Hadrill has suggested that Alfred's producing a law
code was a consequence of his resuming 'a practice that had been lost in
England because he knew that, up to the time of Charles the Bald, the
Carolingians had found a use for it'.54 The suggestion is a very
important one in the present context. At the time when the West Saxon
dynasty was acquiring new scope for the exercise of power it came into
a relationship with Prankish circles which were devoted to the memory
and to the collection of the records of Carolingian glory.
In the tenth century dynastic relations with the sub-Carolingian
world continued to be important; but Carolingian influence is most
readily demonstrable in the thought and institutions of the English
church, especially in the time of the monastic reformers and in the next
generation. The writings of Wulfstan and /Elfric were deeply
influenced by Carolingian thought. 55 A bishop writing a letter in the
reign of Ethelred II could copy the larger part of it from one of
Alcuin.56 The monastic reformers looked to contemporary models of
observance; but in establishing a series of monasteries which was
integral to the state and in drawing up such a document as the Regularis
Concordia they looked much further back, to Louis the Pious and
Benedict of Aniane.57 Stubbs fairly commented: 'It would be very rash
to observe that while the bishops who composed so large a part of the
Witanagemot sought foreign models for their canons they did not also
seek foreign models for their secular laws.' 58
The seriousness of the difficulties, but also the importance of the
possibilities, which are intrinsic to the attempt to consider Old English
government in a Carolingian and sub-Carolingian context are most
apparent in the case of Domesday Book. The Carolingians had written
surveys made for a wide variety of purposes, often using the sworn
52
D. A. Bullough, The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to y-Elfric',
Settimane . . ., xix (Spoleto, 1971), p. 455, n. 2.
53
J. M. Wallace Hadrill, 'The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century', History,
new ser., xxxv (1950), pp. 212-14.
54
Idem, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), p.
148.
55
E.g. D. Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), esp. p. 61; P.
Clemoes, '/Elfric', Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp.
182-83.
56
F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), p. 22.
57
D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1966), p. 42.
58
Constitutional History, i, p. 224.
inquest. 59 They had mansus lists. In 843 the empire was divided per
descriptas mansas. A hundred and twenty commissioners toured to make
the necessary descriptio, part of which probably survives.60 The
emperors had surveys made, in great detail, of particular estates. They
pursued careful inquiries of other kinds. For example, in 864 Charles
the Bald ordered a detailed inquiry into markets, past and present, the
results of which were to be returned in writing, on breves, a term not
unfamiliar to students of Domesday.61 Carolingian taxation involved
the listing and valuation of property. There is very little about
Domesday, considered as a piece of administration, which would have
seemed unfamiliar to a Carolingian official of the period between
Charlemagne and Charles the Bald. When the wide variety, the
sometimes wide extent, and the techniques of Carolingian surveys are
considered it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that theirs is the
tradition in which Domesday, somehow or other, must lie. The
possibilities of connection are numerous; the gap in the evidence is
wide. No one knows when (no one indeed really knows if) surveys
ceased to be used by the Continental rulers; no one knows when
English rulers began to use them.
If such techniques fell into desuetude in sub-Carolingian states some
of them were preserved in the church. The tradition of the estate
survey, the polyptych (or descriptio, another term familiar to students of
Domesday Book) was continuous there from the ninth century to the
twelfth.63 Guerard, the founder of the study of such surveys, saw
Domesday Book as one of them: 'De tous les documents qui peuvent
etre ranges dans la classe des polyptyques, le plus etendu et le plus
remarquable'.64 Something of what he meant can be seen in
considering, for example, the compilation of the polyptych of the
59
W. Metz, Das Karolingische Reichsgut (Berlin, 1960), pp. 11-90; Ganshof, The
Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy, pp. 130-32.
60
Ganshof, op. cit., pp. 292-95.
61
Capitularia, ii, op. cit., pp. 317-18. For breve in its common Domesday meaning of
schedule or return see Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy, p. 293 and
E. Lesne, Histoire de lapropriete ecclesiasique en France, iii (Lille, 1936), pp. 1-30, esp. 1-6.
It was the term almost invariably used by Carolingian government in such contexts as:
'per omne regnum suum litteras misit, ut episcopi, abbates et abbatissae breves de
honoribus suis quanta mansa quisque haberet . . . deferre curarent' ('Annals of St.
Berlin', 5.a. 869, ed. F. Grat, J. Vielliard and S. Clemencet (Paris, 1964), pp. 152-53.
62
Joranson, The Danegeld in France, p. 49.
63
Lesne, iii, op. cit., pp. 1-30. The early meanings of descriptio commonly have to do
with a record or survey made for purposes of taxation (Ducange, Glossarium, s.v.). In the
Carolingian period it denotes asurvey, e.g. of the kind which was made for the division
of the empire in 843 (p. 48 above) or inventory e.g. such that 'by consulting it the king
could discover not only what he possessed, but also what his possessions were worth'
(Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy, pp. 293-94). For its use to denote
an estate survey, see Lesne, op. cit., iii, 11—20.
64 Polyptyque de I'abbe Irminon, op. cit., i, p. 25.
abbey of Priim, in Lorraine, in 893, or somewhat before.
Commissioners were sent to all the abbey's demesnes (which were
scattered over some hundreds of square miles) to inquire into the
number of manses of every description, into mills, and into other
sources of income.65 Perrin has shown, from variations in the text as it
applies to different areas, that a number of different sets of
commissioners were despatched and he discusses the way in which their
original returns were put together and edited.66 He goes on to
emphasise the almost universal practice of writing out a polyptych in a
book, rather than on the rolls normal for other kinds of record, and the
status of such a survey as public record.67 There is an echo of
Domesday here, not too faint, and not inconceivably answering.
It may be then that the Carolingian techiques which are seen at their
apogee in Domesday Book were tansmitted to England by the church.
True, there is no sign of a complete descriptio having been made for the
lands of any pre-Conquest monastery. Such surveys were far from
universal on the Continent. But Continental houses which did not have
complete surveys could still make use of the techniques of written
record which came from the world of the Capitulare de Villis and the
Brevium Exempla. They could make inventories of stock and lists of
treasure and survey their estates piecemeal, as occasion arose.68 The
handful of administrative documents from English monasteries, which
have been argued to be the survivors from many more, are of just such
kinds. Doubtless it is unremarkable that one list of men, oxen and
flitches of bacon resembles another, even if one comes from
Êthelwold's Ely and the other from the Brevium Exempla.69 But there
are somewhat more specific resemblances between English and
Continental documents. In particular there are Continental precedents
for two English documents in which a list of treasures is followed by a
list of sources of income.70 In general the English documents do look as
if they came from milieux whose techniques in the use of writing in
estate management were in a Carolingian tradition.
Most of the documents in question come from monasteries,
especially from Ely; and none is earlier than the end of the tenth
century. English monastic reform is well-known to have owed much to
Continental houses, especially Fleury, St Peter's, Ghent, and the
reformed houses of Lorraine, notably Gorze and Verdun. From such
houses could be learned, not only how monks should rightly live, but
65
C.-E. Perrin, Recherches sur la seigneurie rurale en Lorraine (n.p., 1935), pp. 3-93.
66
Ibid., pp. 47-64; cf. pp. 600-3.
67
Ibid., pp. 614, 607.
68
Lesne, op. cit., iii, pp. 19-20, 76-77.
69
69
Robertson, Anglo-saxon charers, no. XXXIX; Capitularia, i, pp.250-52.
Robertson,
V (pp. 19497); Capitularia,
op.i, he.cit.,
cit.; Lesne,
nos. XXXIX and CI
op. cit., iii, p. 156.
also, and no less important, how the property whereby monks lived
should be looked after. Abbo of Fleury had much to do with the
English reform. He well knew the value of a polyptych. In a letter to a
fellow abbot he described the good use to which he had put libri politici a
temporibus Magni Caroli, even though, pene vetustate consumpti.71 The
surviving documents from the Lorraine houses, especially Gorze and
Verdun, show the careful use of writing in estate management. Better
record keeping could indeed be directly associated with reform.72 It is
reasonable to suppose that English reformed houses were influenced by
their foreign exemplars in this respect as in others. What such a
potentate as ^thelwold learned in the church he could have applied in
the state.
The use of the inquest is almost intrinsic to the Carolingian tradition
of inquiry and survey. The possibility of the inquest's use in late Anglo-
Saxon England is widely admitted, though there are differences of
opinion on how formal it was and on whether it was used by the
Crown.7 There is a little evidence which has not been used by the main
authorities. It has been acutely observed that the early part of what is
called Ethelred's fourth code looks like a reply to an inquest on the
customs of London.7 In addition there are two surveys, one dating
from between the Conquest and Domesday, the other of about the time
of Domesday, recording dues owed to, respectively, the bishop of
Winchester at Taunton and the church at Lambourne.75 Both are in
English, and witnessed. A witnessed survey of dues comes close to a
record of a sworn inquest, especially when, as in the Taunton
document, they are dues owed in the past. It relates to the state of affairs
on the day of the Confessor's death, so recalling Domesday. The other
claims royal participation in some way. These documents strengthen,
though they do not clinch, the case for the pre-Conquest inquest and
for its use by the Crown. It is curious, but characteristic, that while it
has long been admitted that the English inquest may have had a
Carolingian ancestor, it has nearly always been assumed that the
descent could only be via the Normans.
It is sobering to consider what account historians would have given of
the history of English administration had Domesday and the early
records of the Exchequer been lost. Left to squeeze what they could from
charters and annals they would gravely have underrated the English
state. One may wonder how far other European states have been
71
Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, cxxxix, col. 442.
72
Perrin, Recherches sur la seigneurie rurale en Lorraine, pp. 101-239, 599.
73
R. V. Turner, 'The origin of the medieval English jury', Journal of British Studies, vii
(1967-68), no. 2, pp. 1-10.
74
H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Althelberht to Magna
Carta (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 28.
75
Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, App. I, nos. IV, V.
underrated by their historians, lacking financial records older than the
thirteenth century. That administration on the Continent in the tenth
and eleventh centuries may have been more sophisticated than is
commonly assumed multiplies possible explanations for the
resemblances between Carolingian and English government. While it is
very likely that some important developments in England reflect the
influence of the ninth-century empire, its memory, or its records, others
may derive from France, Germany or Normandy. Nevertheless, if it is
granted that when the Domesday survey was made and the breves
incorporated in the great descriptio, this was much more likely to have
been the fruit of a strong administrative tradition which had been
continuously maintained from Carolingian times than of the adoption of
ad hoc procedures, and if it is asked where that tradition had found a home
in the century preceding 1086, the answer must be: just possibly
Normandy, 76 but much more probably England.
The framework of the Old English state lasted long. Some of it still
endures. Nevertheless it came under heavy strain in the twelfth century,
which was not a period of universal progress in English administration.
It is possible that the Anglo-Saxon fiscal system was never afterwards so
efficient, or oppressive, as it had been under Ethelred and Cnut;77 it is
likely that Stephen's reign did much to ruin it; but it was Henry II who
actually dismantled it. Henry I had continued the Danegeld. It is not
known whether Stephen levied it. Henry II did so for the last time in
1162. Although the old assessment continued to be used occasionally for
shire dona and hidage or carucage taxes were revived between 1194 and
1220, the balance of the fiscal system shifted towards scutage, the
exploitation of feudal incidents and the sale of royal rights.78 Regular
changes of coin type continued until 1158, '1158 and not 1066 is the year
for the numismatist to have always in mind'.79 In that year Henry
completely abandoned the system of renovatio monetae. The coinage of
ugly and ill-struck pennies of the 'Tealby' type which was then
introduced was maintained until 1180. By the end of the century the
English coinage had gone over to the sub-Carolingian simplicity of the
type immobilise.
It is possible to regard both these changes as reforms. Yet though
Danegeld was, as we are often assured, riddled with anomalies (which
Henry increased), it was the largest item in the king's not very large
revenue; and the Angevin fiscal system, as we follow it along the road to
76
Yver, 'Les premieres institutions du duche normand', p. 339 for recent work on the
early Norman fiscal system.
77
Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (1960 reprint), pp. 25-26, 514; Dolley and
Metcalf, 'The Reform of the English Coinage under Eadgar', p. 157.
78
Painter, Studies in the History of the Medieval English Feudal Barony (Baltimore, 1943),
pp. 74-79; J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 19-42.
79 Dolley, The Norman Conquest and the English Coinage, pp. 35—36.
Runnymede, is not without anomalies of its own. It is highly probable
that Henry lost money by the currency revolution of 1158.80 It may be
that both abandonments were concessions. Certainly, in both instances,
something which was, or once had been, very elaborate and orderly was
replaced by something simpler to administer.
A marked change, certainly in the frame of mind in which England
was governed, arguably in the power and coherence with which it was
governed, may be seen in the treatment of administrative areas and
boundaries. Tenth-century government created new units and
suppressed old. The shires it made lay orderly on the map until 1 April
1974. On that map were elements of disorder: the foolish little shire of
Rutland and the oddly disposed counties of the north west. These were
not Saxon, but Angevin muddles. Although Rutland had a distinct
status in the Anglo-Saxon period, its rise to the status of shire and the
dignity of a sheriff was the product of a confused process in the twelfth
century.81 Similarly in the north west. Until John's reign Westmorland
was treated in an anomalous way, having a sheriff only when one of the
two lordships which made it up was in the king's hand.82 The odd
northern boundary of Lancashire is that between the fiefs of Roger of
Poitou and Ivo Taillebois in 1094; among other eccentricities it bisects a
parish. The early history of Lancashire is anomalous in other ways. For
a time it was a kind of private shire, Roger of Poitou having his own
sheriff. The Angevin Exchequer treated it as a unit of lordship rather
than of administrative geography, in that the other lands of Roger were
always included with it for Exchequer purposes.83 These were shires
which Old English government had not reached. What appears in them
is not its system, organised in a way which seems rational to the
modern eye, but a different one, whose instinct was to organise ad hoc,
and largely by reference to who owned what.
The same contrasts can be seen, on a wider scale, between the way in
which the English kings ordered their acquisitions in the tenth century
and that in which the Capetians ordered theirs from the twelfth. In the
one there is a reduction to uniformity; in the other the superimposition
of royal government on whatever already existed, with as a
consequence the France of the ancien regime, in some ways formidably
united, in others with anomalies numberless and, for example, far more
provincial distinctions in law than anyone has found in eleventh-
century England. That the essential difference between the two states
80
D. F. Allen, A Catalogue of Coins in the British Museum. The Cross-and-Crosslets
('Tealby') Type of Henry II (London, 1951), p. Ixxxviii.
81
F. M. Stenton in Victoria County History of Rutland, i (London, 1908), pp. 134-36; J.
M. Ramsay, ibid., pp. 165-71.
82
J. C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), p. 199.
83
J. Tait, in Victoria County History of Lancashire, ii (London, 1908), pp. 181-82, 187-
88.
lies in the time of their unification can be seen in considering that
astonishing survival of ancien regime attitudes, the independent status
allowed the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, or the centuries for
which Berwick-on-Tweed was left with a totally anomalous status, or
the long delay in shiring most of Wales. Lands which were added to
England after 1200 were treated in the spirit with which the Capetians
treated their acquisitions.
The church presents a similar contrast between what happened
before and after the twelfth century. Edward the Elder and Athelstan
could create new dioceses on what appears a rational plan. If what they
did was sometimes undone by amalgamations in the following century
one can in either case see that innovation was possible and that
administrative units were not regarded as immutable. In the late
Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods new parishes were created, at least
in the east, almost at will, and as necessity or greed required. In the
twelfth century new bishoprics ceased to be created; Ely (1108) and
Carlisle (1133) were the last. It became very much harder to make new
parishes.86 In consequence the disproportions between English sees
remained unquestioned through the middle ages; while the distribution
of parishes in the nineteenth century remained what it had been in the
twelfth (a phenomenon which had an effect on the geography of the
Liberal vote).87
A serious effort to explain why medieval states were in important
ways less powerful, less capable of thorough organisation and
reorganisation, than those of a Carolingian type would extend this
paper too far. It may be that much in the regularity of the earlier period
was very old indeed. Orderliness in the disposition of men and land is
not necessarily the fruit of progress. Something of the answer may
perhaps be glimpsed in the reasons for the cessation of the creation of
new parishes. This was the result of the development of canon law and
of papal jurisdiction, which secured innumerable vested interests and so
half froze the church. The number of vested interests, and of
individuals, which kings had to respect may similarly have increased. It
is worth noticing that the Anglo-Normans seem to have been the last
rulers in England to have used forced and unpaid labour to build great
earthworks and the last to employ harrying as an instrument of
government.
For whatever reasons the attitudes and powers of government and its
approach to institutions and to boundaries changed. The changes which
84
Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 3rd edn, pp. 438-40; F. Barlow, The English Church
1000-1066 (London, 1963), pp. 162-65.
85
Ibid., pp. 183-208.
86
E.g. J. H. Round, Family Origins and Other Studies (London, 1930), pp. 272-74.
87
H. Felling, The Social Geography of British Elections i 885-1900 (London, 1967), pp.
108, 206, 289.
can be traced in twelfth-century England are not simply to be explained
as a transformation of the archaic, if sometimes oddly regular, into the
more developed or modern. For the late Anglo-Saxon system of
government had not been specious in its uniformity or rudimentary in
its precocity. It was uniform and sophisticated and reflected not only
power, but intelligence. It was in important ways the continuation and
the heir of the Carolingian state and our knowledge of it may provide
our nearest approach to apprehending what the Carolingian state was
like. If, ultimately, England avoided the fate of the rest of ancien regime
Europe it was largely thanks to a framework established by a regime
yet more ancient.
88
I am indebted to Miss P. A. Adams for her help with this paper and to Dr D. M.
Metcalf, who advised me on the Anglo-Saxon coinage but is not responsible for any
errors.
A note on additional bibliography will be found on p. 189 below.

11
The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the
Administrative History of Western Europe
The history of administration on much of the Continent between the

eighth century and the thirteenth may be roughly divided into three
phases. First, the Carolingian, with records indicating that the central
authority aspired to organisation and control on a large scale. Second, an
age of obscurity, when written sources for governmental administration
hardly exist, and the temptation to equate lack of documents with
absence of elaborate government is strong, maybe justifiable. Third,
from the twelfth century the darkness begins to lift, and records appear
indicating the development of administrations of some sophistication,
for example, the first surviving central financial accounts from
Normandy (1180), Flanders (1187) and France (1202-3). England is
different. There are no records from the eighth and ninth centuries
corresponding to the Carolingian capitularies and formularies. But from
the eleventh century there is the incomparable Domesday survey (1086),
proving England to have been a formidably organised state; and the first
of our records for a twelfth century 'comptabilite centrale', the Pipe Roll
of 1129-30, is two generations older than the earliest Continental
counterpart. Such records make it possible to trace the partial
transformation of a state of a Carolingian type into one of a twelfth
century type without an intervening age of obscurity. They raise
questions which are important, not only for England and for the age in
which they were written, but also for other countries and periods.
Nearly the whole of the England which William conquered was
divided in an orderly way into shires, and the shires into hundreds. 1
Almost all land was assessed in hides and the like for purposes of taxation
and service.2 Regular sub-division into units of local government and a
1
The shires (counties) of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham,
Lancashire and Rutland were created after 1066. Otherwise a map showing the English
shires as they were until 1974 represents to an astonishing degree the administrative
geography of the early eleventh century, though there was considerable tidying of
boundaries in the intervening period. Hundreds are more complicated. In some shires
they remained largely unchanged from the Anglo-Saxon period on, in others they were
reordered between the Conquest and the thirteenth century. For a general account of
hundredal topography see O. F. Anderson, The English Hundred Names, Lund 1934, pp.
XL-XLVII. In much of the Danelaw what was elsewhere called a hundred was called a
wapentake.
2
The best general account of the assessment system is still F. W. Maitland, Domesday
Book and Beyond, Cambridge 1897; reprinted London 1960, Essay III. For more recent
work see n. 9 below. In much of the Danelaw the carucate was the unit, not the hide.
171
near-universal system of assessment were of fundamental importance.
That the country was divided into shires, each under a royal official, the
sheriff, gave a degree of general control and made uniformity in
administrative action possible. The system of assessment enabled kings
to levy taxes on the country as a whole, sometimes at very high rates.3 It
was also used by the Anglo-Saxons to provide military and naval service;
and its use to raise troops continued in the early Anglo-Norman period.4
England was so organised as to give its eleventh century rulers powers
which others lacked.
The assessment systems which were so important in the eleventh
century had a very long history. They appear in the late seventh century,
as soon as there are charters to provide descriptions of land. Of some
thirty-five charters with any claim to authenticity granting land before
700, all but two describe it in terms of some Latin equivalent of the hide
(in Kent, sulung). That the hidages of early grants are commonly in round
numbers makes it implausible that they are other than fiscal assessments.
That some are of scattered pieces of land, each with an assessment, like
the Sussex charter giving 38 cassati, made up of estates of 12, 10, 11, 2 and
3, suggests a detailed assessment comparable to that of Domesday.5 In a
few instances it is possible to show that an estate had the same hidage in
the eighth century and in Domesday.6 This strengthens the case, if it
needs strengthening, for the later systems of assessment having been in a
continuous line of development from the earlier. To consider the long
history of such systems in early England is to be reminded of how much
of Dark Age government may have had its origins in very old systems of
social organisation, and that some of the history of medieval
administration may stretch back into the prehistoric past. 7
Assessment systems in Anglo-Saxon England were old, but not
unchanging. On the contrary, their recurrent reordering and flexible
use were very important to the state. For example, the organisation of
3
The first clear reference to such a tax is in the D version of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle's annal relating to 1051, stating that in that year the heregeld was abolished in
the thirty-ninth year after its institution, Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed.
C. Plummer and J. Earle, Oxford 1892, I, p. 173; but it is generally and very plausibly
supposed to go back at least to Ethelred H's payments to the Danes, F. M. Stenton,
Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. Oxford 1971, p. 644. It was levied on at least four
occasions by William I, in 1083 at the high rate of 61- on the hide (Stenton, loc. cit.) and
it is suggested, on the basis on a Domesday reference, that it had become annual by the
Conqueror's last years, as it certainly was by Henry I's time, V. H. Galbraith, The
Making of Domesday Book, Oxford 1961, p. 42, cf. no. 42 below.
4
C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions, Oxford 1962, Chapters III-
VI, and his The Military Organisation of Norman England, Oxford 1965, Chapter VIII.
5
W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols. and index, London 1885-99, no.
78; P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography, London
1968, no. 45.
6
F. M. Stenton, Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon Period, Oxford 1955, p. 74, n. 1.
7
J. Campbell, review of J. Morris, The Age of Arthur, see pp. 121-30 above.
The Anglo-Norman State in Administrative History 173
the fortress system in late ninth and early tenth century Wessex must
have required extensive redeployment of hidage assessments to produce
the scheme set out in the Burghal Hidage, which we have evidence to
show not to have been merely a parchment plan.8 The creation of the
shires and hundreds of the Midlands, with their assessments in neat
multiples of 100 and 120 hides was a tenth century feat. In some areas
we have evidence for orderly and complete reassessments between the
tenth century and 1086, while the Domesday survey itself was probably
intended towards a general reassessment.9 The local variations in the
patterns of hidages etc. which Domesday reveals, and the way in which
one pattern can sometimes be traced overlying another are indications
of the long history of systems of assessment and of successive changes
in them.
What kind of central administration, with what records, went with
all this? The Domesday survey must have stood in a tradition familiar
with surveys on a significant scale and in some way connected with that
of Carolingian government. 10 Recent work has shown that before
Domesday the central authority had hidage lists, some of them
arranged, like Domesday, on a tenurial basis, records of the farms of
8
The Burghal Hidage probably dates from 914-18 and lists 30 of the burhs (fortified
places) of Wessex and 3 of those of Mercia together with the hidages attributed to each
for its maintenance and defence. A feature of special importance is the formula given at
the end of the text indicating the basis of the hidage allocation. There were to be four
men for each pole (5J/2 yds.) of rampart and each hide was to provide one man. Thus it is
possible to calculate from the hidages what the perimeter of each fortification was
deemed to be. Investigation of the sites concerned has shown that in a considerable
number of cases there was a fairly, sometimes a very, close correspondence between
what is implied by the Hidage and what is found on the ground. The most striking case
is that of Winchester, where the perimeter implied by the Hidage is 9,900 ft., the real
perimeter of the fortifications 9,954 ft. See especially David Hill 'The Burghal Hidage:
the Establishment of a Text', Medieval Archaeology, 13 (1969), pp. 84-92 and his 'The
Origins of the Saxon Towns' in The South Saxons, ed. P. Brandon, London and
Chichester 1978, pp. 174-89, esp. 182-87; C. A. Ralegh Radford, 'Late Pre-Conquest
Boroughs and their Defences', ibid., 14 (1970), pp. 83-103; and M. Biddle, 'Towns', in
The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. M. Wilson, London 1976, esp. pp. 126-
34.
9
Cyril Hart, The Hidation of Northamptonshire, Leicester 1970, is the most important
recent study of late Anglo-Saxon assessment. Even if not all his conclusions are
accepted the evidence for the regularities of the system and in the ways it was modified
are inescapable, see e.g. Tables VII and VIII (pp. 38 and 41). The suggestions of W. J.
Corbett, The Tribal Hidage', Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. new ser., 14 (1900), pp. 208-30,
on tenth and early eleventh century assessment and its relation to hundreds remain
important. For Domesday, S. P. J. Harvey, 'Domesday Book and Anglo-Norman
Governance', Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. 5th ser. 25 (1975), pp. 175-93.
10
J. Campbell, 'Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth
Century', esp. pp. 163-7 above. I should have observed on p. 164 that a letter of Bishop
Denewulf of Winchester of 900/909 looks as if it may draw on a written list of the stock
etc. on an estate, Birch, Cartularium, as at n. 5, nos. 618, 619, Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon
Charters, as at n. 5, no. 1444.
royal demesne, and of what was due from boroughs.11 Some of these
records went back to the Confessor's reign; for example a surviving
survey of the royal property in Winchester of c. 1110 is almost certainly
based on a similar written survey of c. 1057.12 Of particular importance
are the 'Geld Rolls' preserved in the Exon Domesday. These are the
record of an inquest into the payment of a geld (whether in 1084 or 1086
is disputed) in the five south western counties.13 They are related to,
but distinct from, the Domesday survey, and show that it was not
unique as a large-scale fiscal inquiry. Among much else of interest they
indicate that the writing of accounts probably accompanied the
collection of geld, for the collectors for Somerset were allowed a
deduction for the cost of a scribe.14 That the Wiltshire record exists in
three slightly differing versions is an indication of how much 'paper-
work' could be associated with such an inquiry.15 One other
comparable record survives. The Northamptonshire Geld Roll, of
some date between the Conquest and 1083, is probably a summary of
the result of a somewhat similar inquest. That it is in English is
suggestive that the making of such records went back before 1066.16
The question arises of how far back it went. We have three hidage
lists from before the reign of Edward the Confessor: the Tribal Hidage
(seventh or eighth century), 17 the Burghal Hidage (early tenth century) 8
and the County Hidage (tenth or early eleventh century).19 There is no
means of telling whether they are the chance survivals from many such
or rather abnormal, even eccentric, productions.20 It is not bizarre,
11
S. P. J. Harvey, as at no. 9; and her 'Domesday Book and its Predecessors', Eng.
Hist. Rev. 86 (1971), pp. 753-73.
12
F. Barlow in F. Barlow, M. Biddle, O. von Feilitzen and D. J. Keene, Winchester
in the Early Middle Ages: an Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday (Winchester
Studies, I), Oxford 1976, pp. 9-10, cf. S. P. J. Harvey in Medieval Settlement, ed. P.
Sawyer, London 1976, pp. 196-7.
13
For these see especially R. Welldon Finn, The Liber Exoniensis, London 1964,
Chapter VI and Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book, as at n. 3, pp. 87-101, 223-
30.
14
Domesday Book, IV (Additamenta), ed. H. Ellis, London 1816, f. 526.
15
R. R. Darlington in Victoria County History of Wiltshire, ed. R. B. Pugh and E.
Crittall, II, London 1955, p. 171.
16
A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge 1956, pp. 230-36, 481-84, cf.
Hart, as at n. 9, pp. 16-21.
17
W. Davies and H. Vierck, The Contexts of the Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates
and Settlement Patterns', Fruhmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974), pp. 223-93, refer to most
of the previous literature.
18
See n. 16 above.
19
Hart, as at n. 9, though his precise dating (pp. 45-46) is disputable.
20
The private administrative documents of the late Anglo-Saxon period are diverse,
though not numerous, and suggest the fairly extensive use of writing for administrative
purposes at least by the church, Campbell, 'Observations on English Government', see
above pp. 157-8.
though one can well see why it is unusual, to entertain the supposition
that the extensive use of written record for administrative purposes went
back at least as far as the eighth century. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon govern-
ment in the eighth and ninth centuries differed from Carolingian not so
much in the extent to which it used writings as in the kind of record
which has survived. (It is worth remembering that we only know that
Offa issued a law code because Alfred mentions having used it.)21 On the
other hand, the older assessment systems are seen to be, the more it is
necessary to admit that quite elaborate administration is possible without
written records; as indeed it was in some African states as Europeans
found them.22
The problem of origins is equally difficult for the central accounting
system. The Pipe Roll of 1129-30 shows an elaborate system already
established. One important part of this, the system of reckoning, using
a squared cloth as a kind of abacus, which gave the Exchequer its name,
was probably of fairly recent origin.23 Yet Round showed in 1899 that
some important elements in the financial system of Henry I's reign
went back to the time of Edward the Confessor and that there were
grounds for suspecting that others did so as well. It is certain that the
elaborate procedure of'blanching' is older than the Conquest, that there
is 'a distinct allusion to the the "terrae datae" system' in Domesday, and
that the commutation of firma unius diet and the like were already far
advanced under the Confessor. 'There are hints, if not actual evidence'
that the sheriffs farm was 'more or less in existence'.24 Other
suggestive details have been gleaned from Domesday by other scholars,
in particular by Tait and Morris.25 It is clear that Edward's income was
to a large extent in cash. A wide range of royal revenues, both from
21 F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols, Halle 1903—16, I, p. 47

22
E.g. L. Mair, Primitive Government, Harmondsworth 1962, esp. Chapter VII. For
observations on the possibilities of oral accounting, P. D. A. Harvey, Manorial Records
ofCuxham, c. 1200-1359, London 1976, p. 15. It is noteworthy, however, that not only
does the Tribal Hidage (cf. n. 17 above) quite likely go back to the seventh century but
it has also recently been shown that a written assessment of ship-service from elsewhere
in Britain, Dalriada, may well be equally old, J. Bannerman, Studies in the History of
Dalriada, Edinburgh 1974, pp. 132-56.
23
R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century , Oxford 1912, Chapter III; C.
H. Haskins, The Abacus and the King's Curia', Eng. Hist. Rev. 27 (1912), pp. 101-6,
where he shows that the technique might have been available in the reign of the
Conqueror. The interest shown in the abacus from the tenth century (for which see G.
R. Evans 'Difficillima et ardua. Theory and Practice in Treatises on the Abacus', Journ.
Medieval Hist. 3 (1977) pp. 21-38) almost certainly had importance for administration;
the early twelfth century tract on the subject by Turchill is of special interest since it was
written with English royal financial administration in mind, Poole, pp. 48-50..
2
J. H. Round, 'The Origins of the Exchequer' in The Commune of London and Other
Studies, Westminster 1899, pp. 62-96, esp. pp. 65-74.
25
W. A. Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff, Manchester 1927, pp. 28-34, 62-70;
J. Tait, The Medieval English Borough, Manchester 1936, pp. 140-54.
estates and other sources, were framed for fixed sums and arrangements
were made to reduce farms to take account of the alienation of lands or
the incurring of expenditure on the king's behalf.26 It is not clear that
farms were consolidated in the farm of the shire rendered by the sheriff
to the extent that they were under Henry I but even if the sheriffs 'did not
as yet manage the farming system within their respective shires, they
were very important in that system';27 and to the extent to which farms
were not concentrated in the hands of the sheriffs Edward would have
had more financial agents to deal with than did Henry. The complexity
of the royal finances as revealed by Domesday is such that if Edward the
Confessor did not have some fairly good system of accounting using
written record, he must have had chamberlains with singularly good
memories. The balance of the evidence is that he did have some such
system, though too much is unknown to permit a more precise
statement. Here too the question arises of how far back the origins of
such a system go. The problem is even more acute than that of when
the use of written surveys and lists of what was due to the king begins.
There is no English evidence for the keeping of accounts before the
eleventh century, though there is some from the Carolingian period
(even, perhaps, earlier) on the Continent.28 One very important
element in the accounting system revealed in the first Pipe Roll could
have been of great antiquity, the use of tallies. A tally is a piece of
wood, cut with notches to indicate sums of money or quantities of
commodities and then so split as to leave both parties to a transaction
with a verifiable record. It thus provides a means whereby transactions
involving numbers can be recorded and authenticated in a manner
decipherable by the illiterate. When their use begins is not, apparently,
knowrn; if it extends back into the Dark Ages this could have important
implications for early fiscal administration. Richard fitz Nigel interestly
says that the original name for the Exchequer was the Tallies.29
26
Round, as at n. 24, p. 73, Morris, as at n. 25, p. 30.
27
Morris, as at n. 25, p. 29. The interesting suggestions on the sheriffs farm made
by R. W. Southern, The Place of Henry I in English History', Proc. Brit. Acad. 48
(1962), pp. 157-69, he has now withdrawn, see his Medieval Humanism and Other
Studies, Oxford 1970, p. V. It is expected that the publication of Miss J. Aveyard (now
Mrs Green)'s Oxford D. Phil, thesis on the administration of Henry I will add much to
knowledge of these matters.
28
A. Tautscher, 'Betriebsfhrung und Buchhaltung in den karolingischem
Konigsgutern nach dem Capitulare de Villis', Vierteljahresschrift fur Sozial- und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte 61 (1974) pp. 1-28; P. Gasnault, 'Documents financiers de Saint
Martin de Tours de 1'Epoque Merovingienne', Journal des Savants (1970), pp. 82-93.
29
H. Jenkinson 'Medieval Tallies, Public and Private', Archaeologia 74 (1923-4), pp.
280-351; D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and
Accounting, Oxford 1971, pp. 212-34. Cf. Regesta Anglo-Normannorum, II (1100-1135),
ed. C. Johnson and H. A. Cronne, Oxford 1956, n. 1490, a charter of Henry I freeing a
monastery from a rent quatuor solidi . . . ponantur in tallia mea et ipsi inde sint quieti.
Dialogus de Scaccario, ed C. Johnson, London 1950 p. 7.
If it is hard to be sure how much of the financial administration
revealed in the first Pipe Roll had been introduced in the Anglo-
Norman period it is easier to observe development in the central
writing-office. Dr. Chaplais has shown that throughout the Anglo-
Saxon period royal charters (and even some, not impossibly all, of the
sealed writs) were written by beneficiaries or by monastic scriptoria
working for the king.30 There is little doubt that substantial
development had taken place by the reign of Henry I. Henry had a
chancellor. (It is certain that the office existed early in his father's reign
but if, as is just possible, it is older, it is not much older.) He had a
number of clerks writing for him. The hands of some of these have
been identified and it seems that four or more were sometimes
employed at the same time.31 This development can fairly be associated
with the great increase from his reign in the number of surviving
documents written for the king, though before too much is made of
this a closer analysis of the determinants of survival than is so far
available is required.32
The vast majority of documents issued for the king to survive from
before the thirteenth century relate to the ownership of lands and rights.
Those of other kinds, communicating information and instructions, can
be more important in administration, and may have been much more
numerous. It is demonstrable that a large number of these were issued in
the twelfth century and have been lost. The Pipe Roll of 1129-30
contains references to over three hundred brevia, of which none survive.
There is a great increase in the number of surviving royal letters, not
relating to land or rights, after 1199, when first letters close are enrolled.
It is difficult to avoid Dr Bishop's conclusion, that the number of such
documents written in the twelfth century and since lost must have been
'immense'.33 It could well be that more such letters were written at the
same time as that from which we have more documents of types which
30
Pierre Chaplais, 'The Origin and Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon
Diploma', Journ. Soc. of Archivists III. 2 (Oct. 1965), pp. 48-61 and 'The Anglo-Saxon
Chancery; from the Diploma to the Writ', ibid. III. 4 (Oct. 1966), pp. 160-76. For an
interesting argument that from the tenth century the Anglo-Saxon kings kept copies of
charters issued for them, C. Hart, 'The Codex Wintoniensis and the King's Haligdom',
in Land, Church and People. Essays Presented to H. P. R. Finberg, ed. J. Thirsk, Reading
1970, pp. 7-38.
31
T. A. M. Bishop, Scriptores Regis, Oxford 1961, pp. 30-31. H. A. Cronne, The
Reign of Stephen, H35-54. Anarchy in England, London 1970, adds valuable information
and warnings and apparently holds (p. 217) that at least six clerks were writing for the
king at the end of Henry's reign and the beginning of Stephen's.
32 A rough count indicates that the annual average of acts issued of which texts
survive for the kings of England is as follows: Ethelred II 3; Cnut 3; Edward the
Confessor 5; William I 9; William II 13; Henry I 48; Stephen 37. These figures are
rounded to the nearest unit exclude documents issued for Continental beneficiaries for
Continental lands and do not include Matilda's charters.
33
Bishop, Scriptores Regis, as at n. 31, pp. 32-33.
do survive. The nature of the handwriting of some of Henry I's clerks has
suggested to experts that it was that of men who were kept busily
employed. It is possible that Henry could have kept clerks busy simply in
writing charters which recorded his giving things away, but it seems un-
likely/4
The likelihood that documents, other than those which were in some
sense title deeds, had a poor chance of survival does not raise problems
for the twelfth century alone. It is known that the Anglo-Saxons used
letters, not necesarily sealed, for administrative purposes from the ninth
century at the latest. The relatively small number of writs surviving from
the eleventh century Anglo-Saxon kings largely relate to ownership. This
may be why they were preserved; they may be the atypical survivors of a
much larger number, most of which dealt with more ephemeral matters
of business. 5 The twelfth century evidence is sufficient to show the
extent to which such letters can be lost. There is thus a possibility that
government in the eleventh century, or even earlier, involved the fairly
extensive use of administrative letters.
There are broadly analogous problems even in regard to judicial
administration. It is certain that extensive developments in this took
place in the twelfth century. Their extent is matched, though not
disproved, by that of our ignorance of how the legal system actually
worked before Henry II's time. Consider two points at which legal and
financial administration meet, the Pipe Roll of 1129-30 shows that
Henry I got much of his income from selling justice, or selling judicial
procedures. There are no means of telling how far William I, or Edward
the Confessor did the same thing, or, if so, how the relevant payments
were made and accounted for. Similarly, there is evidence in Domesday
Book indicating that, while fines for lesser offences were farmed, those
for major offences were extra firmas.36 Again, we do not know what
procedures and records were involved.
The nearest approach which a certain philosopher ever made to a
34
Ibid. p. 13; though note that the surviving Pipe Roll of Henry I is in the hand of a
scribe who also wrote royal charters, ibid. p. 28. A specially important kind of
document which may have had a poor chance of survival is that of writs embodying
what is in effect legislation, widely circulated. Four such, apart from Henry I's
coronation charter, survive from the Anglo-Norman period. There is evidence to
suggest that there were others. It could be that there were many such. It could even be
that the absence of law 'codes' after Cnut is attributable to legislation having been
promulgated thereafter in writ form, as in the well-known writs of Henry I on the
coinage and on courts, whose manuscript tradition suggests how easily other such
could have been lost. See A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund
to Henry I, Cambridge 1925, pp. 232-4, 235-7, 284-5, 285-6, and 227-8; H. G.
Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Êthelbert to Magna Carta,
Edinburgh 1966, pp. 30-33.
35
Journ. Soc. of Archivists, III. 4 (as at n. 30), p. 170.
36
Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff, as at n. 25, p. 30.
positive statement was to say: 'Not but what it may not have been,
perhaps it was.' To consider, as by implication in this paper, such
questions as 'How detailed a record, if any, did Offa have of hidage
assessments?', or 'What system of written accounting, if any, did Cnut
have when he collected his heregeld?' is to sympathise with this agony.
Such questions verge on the perverse, in so far as they are largely
unanswerable; but they are real questions, and if they are unanswerable,
that is an important fact, showing how little we know, or can know, of
early administration. The Anglo-Norman administrative records
compel such questions, because they demonstrate how much in
administration can escape notice altogether if sources of the right kind
do not happen to survive. If the Domesday survey had not been made,
or had not survived, we should have no idea that William's government
was capable of such a feat, not to speak of much else about English
government for which Domesday is the only, but incontrovertible,
evidence - for example that elements in the accounting system revealed
in the first Pipe Roll go back to the time of the Conquest. Similarly,
were it not for the survival of the twelfth century Exchequer records it
would be impossible to know the scale and complexity of Henry I's
system of account and audit. No contemporary chronicle mentions the
Exchequer or anything about the accounting system. A handful of
charters would enable one to piece together that there was something
called the Exchequer, whose barons appear once with judicial powers,
that rolls and tallies were used in relation to royal accounts, and that
devices existed for making allowance to an accountant for money
which he would owe had not the king given it away; that is all. 7 In
short, negative arguments about early medieval administration must be
held suspect to the extent that they depend on the silence of sources of
the type which commonly survive.38
It would be absurd to be so Pyrrhonian as to question that there were
important changes between the tenth century and the twelfth. It is
prudent to retain a very open mind on what may have existed and yet
be entirely hidden; it is imprudent to be dogmatic about the generation
or scale of any particular change; even the broadest generalisations may
be hazardous. I hazard the generalisations which follow. In the earlier
37
Poole, The Exchequer . . ., as at n. 23, pp. 37-41, Regesta . . ., as at n. 28, nos. 963,
1053, 1490, 1514, 1538, 1741. This handful of references is from some 1500 documents,
far more than survive for any other king at the time.
38
A powerful example of the extent to which a source of a kind which does not
normally survive can provide information and insights not available in those which
normally do is that of the Hebrew responsa, for which see I. A. Agus, Urban Civilization in
Pre-Crusade Europe, 2 vols., Leiden 1966. Consider, for example, the light cast upon
feudal warfare by the revelation that urban merchants dealt, apparently in an organised
way, in booty, and provided the supplies necessary for sieges, I, pp. 99-100 (a document
of c. 1007), cf. I, p. 325 for loans for the paying of ransoms.
part of the period the English state depended heavily on regularity in
divisions of local government and in assessment systems. It displayed
great power in ordering, reordering and exploiting these, more power
than its medieval successor had. The central authority dealt with areas
as much as with individuals. Tax and service were levied by shires and
by hundreds. When assessments were altered it could be for a whole
area; the assessment for a shire or hundred being moved up or down,
changes in what was levied on individuals being consequential on the
changes made in round numbers for large units. Most royal income was
probably paid according to systems whereby it was known in advance
what it ought to be, whether as geld or as farms. It looks like an
administrative world in which regularity, even rigidity, in, for
example, assessment systems, are the counterpart to, and in a sense
necessary because of, the central authority's not having the staff or
organisation to deal on any very regular basis with matters of detail,
local problems, or individuals of no great consquence. Consonant with
such an organisation are indications of the use of rota systems. It was on
a rota basis that Alfred organised the service of his fyrd and of his
ministri.39 The fair (no more than fair) degree of regularity with which
some eleventh century kings adhered to the routine of being at
Winchester for Easter, Westminster for Whitsun and Gloucester for
Christmas is another instance, in a general way, of the same kind of
thing.40 The twelfth century story that three abbeys provided the king's
writing-office in rotation is false as it stands but still may well bear
some correspondence to what actually happened in the tenth century. 41
During the twelfth century the importance of regular assessment
systems in terms of hides began to decline. Their use for taxation and
other purposes continued in the earlier twelfth century; and although
Danegeld was last levied in 1162 hidage assessments were used for
certain kinds of levy thereafter and general taxes on a hidage or a similar
basis were raised between 1194 and 1220. But by Henry II's reign the
Crown had come increasingly to depend on revenue raised on different
bases; and the fiscal significance of hidages, fundamental in the eleventh
century had faded completely by the middle of the thirteenth.42
39
Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel, as at n. 3, p. 84; Asser's Life of King
Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (new impr. with introduction by D. Whitelock) Oxford
1950, pp. 86-87.
40
Most recently discussed by M. Biddle in an unpublished, but, I believe,
forthcoming paper, 'Seasonal Festivals and Residence', read to the Council for British
Archaeology's conference on Archaeology and History of the European Town,
Oxford, April 1975. He showed that a fairly regular itinerary was maintained by the
Norman kings, when in England, until 1109. (It was to a degree anticipated under
Edward the Confessor, but not before.)
41
Chaplais, Journ. Soc. of Archivists III. 4, as at n. 30, pp. 175-6.
42
For Danegeld in the twelfth century see e.g. S. Painter, Studies in the History of the
Medieval English Feudal Barony, Baltimore 1953, pp. 74-79. According to John of
From the twelfth century the offices and offices of central authority
were dealing directly with far more individuals than before. The
developments in the legal system whereby more and more business was
attracted to the central courts or to itinerant justices sent from the centre
was characteristic of much else that was happening. To take one well-
known example, as a result of the activity of an eyre early in John's
reign the sheriff of Yorkshire was responsible to the Exchequer for
recovering about a thousand debts.43 Notwithstanding our ignorance
of the scale on which the late Anglo-Saxon kings used written
instruments the evidence for an increase in the amount of writing done
for the Crown under Henry I is enough strongly to suggest that far
more individuals received documents of one kind or another from the
king in the twelfth century than had been the case earlier. If this was so
it must have been in considerable measure a consequence of social
changes. To take the simplest of these to quantify, in 1066 there were
not more than sixty-one religious houses in England, but by 1216 there
were between 640 and 748, every one capable of creating business for
the central offices.44 In this and other ways it can be seen that not only
was the central government organised in such a way that it could deal
directly with more men and institutions, there were also more men and
institutions whose status and knowledge were such that they were
capable of dealing directly with the central government.45
There are parallels between developments in royal government and
in the organisation of great estates. In the eleventh century great estates
were sometimes, perhaps usually, organised in such a way that
particular parts of the estate provided in rotation what was required
throughout the year; e.g. the estates were divided into thirteen monthly
groups or fifty-two weekly groups. It was also common in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries for great landlords to farm out their estates, so
that they had predictable incomes and only a limited number of
individuals to deal with.46 From the late twelfth century such estates
Worcester, ed. J. R. H. Weaver, Oxford 1908, p. 34, Henry I abandoned it from 1130
but it was restored by Stephen. For taxation later in the twelfth century e.g. Maitland,
Domesday Book and Beyond (reprint 1960), pp. 545-6, J. C. Holt, Magna Carta,
Cambridge 1965, pp. 19-42; S. K. Mitchell, Taxation in Medieval England, New Haven
1951, esp. Chapter III.
43
The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Second Year of King John, ed. D. M. Stenton (Pipe
Roll Society, vol. L, 1934), p. 111; cf. Jenkinson, Medieval Tallies, as at n. 29, p. 300 n. 7.
44
D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses. England and Wales,
2nd ed., Cambridge 1971, p. 494.
45
The introduction of tenure by knight service of the kind revealed in the twelfth
century records may have increased the number of relatively unimportant men who
had direct dealings with the Crown, since there were a considerable number of such
among the tenants in chief.
46
R. W. Lennard, Rural England 1086-1135, Oxford 1959, Chapter V, esp. pp. 132-
4.
began to be run directly by the landlord and his staff, who maintained
detailed control by the extensive use of written record.47
The English evidence for the nature of the state in the Anglo-
Norman period illuminates, and raises important question about, what
happened on the Continent. First, in regard to Carolingian
administration. The resemblances between English government in the
tenth and eleventh centuries and that of the Carolingians earlier are
manifold. The organisation of counties and hundreds, the system for
raising troops and money, that of exacting general oaths and the
methods of inquiry and survey all bear strong resemblances.48 There
are, naturally, significant differences, perhaps the most important being
that from the tenth century England did not have, occasional instances
apart, an equivalent of the Carolingian comes, in the sense of a man of
high status at the head of an individual county.49 Nevertheless the
resemblances are so numerous and significant that late Anglo-Saxon
government may fairly be described as of Carolingian type.
Because late Anglo-Saxon government is known to have worked
effectively its resemblances to that of the Carolingians strengthen the
case for supposing theirs to have worked effectively in an earlier period.
It is understandable, granted that much of the evidence is more for
aspiration than execution, that eminent historians have been inclined to
doubt the effectiveness of Carolingian government. Professor Perroy
went so far as to say 'The truth is that local administration was as non-
existent as central administration'.50 Even Professor Ganshof was
disinclined to believe that most of the reports, lists and returns (of
which he demonstrated many were made) were actually used; rather, he
thought they were 'piled up in a confused heap, or vanished
completely'.51 Neither of these great historians had evidence
categorically to prove all their mistrust of Carolingian efficiency. There
is indeed evidence for inefficiency, impracticability and corruption, but
so there is for many other governmental systems, which nevertheless
worked quite well. It is not, I believe, unfair to suppose that an
important factor in forming certain attitudes to Carolingian
government has been an instinctive disinclination to take the sources at
face-value, to accept that adminstration could have been as they show
it.
47
Harvey Manorial Records of Cuxham, as at n. 22, pp. 12-34. The introduction to
this work now provides by far the best introduction to the history and records of estate
accounting in the period with which it deals. See also Oschinsky, Walter of Henley, as at
n. 28, pp. 212-34.
48
'Observations on English Government', pp. 159-65 above; Hollister, Anglo-Saxon
Military Institutions, as at n. 4, pp. 42-43.
49
H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, Cambridge 1905, Chapter 5.
50
E. Perroy, 'Carolingian Administration' in Early Medieval Society ed. S. L. Thrupp,
New York 1967, p. 146.
51
F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy, London 1971, p. 134.
The possibility that Carolingian administration was effective seems
greater when the evidence is set beside that from a later period in
England. Consider two examples from the reign of Charles the Bald. In
the Edict of Pitres Charles required, inter alia, replies to a detailed
questionnaire on markets.52 Counts were to list all markets and to
provide by proximum placitum nostrum answers to a series of detailed
questions: which markets had been founded in his grandfather's time,
which in his father's, which in his own, which by authority, which
without, which had been moved, and if so by what authority. One
takes such a questionnaire more seriously when one considers
Domesday Book, in which the answers to another such, far more
extensive, but comparable, are preserved.53 Or again, s.a. 869 the
annals of St Bertin record that instructions were given that returns
should be made of the number of manses held by ecclesiastics, by
counts, and by the vassals of counts, and that every hundred manses
were to provide a haistaldum, every thousand an ox-cart etc.54 The
return of breves recalls Domesday. The levy of service looks more
realistic if one compares, for example, that of ship-service by Ethelred
II in 1008 'a warship from 310 hides and a helmet and corselet from 8
hides', for the English evidence is just good enough to show that
Ethelred's order was implemented. It is the more instructive to
compare Charles with Ethelred, for the English king was hardly less
beset by Danes and by dissension than the Frank had been. Yet his
threatened regime was capable of great administrative feats: the
collection of Danegeld on a vast scale, the implementation of septennial
changes in the coinage, important modifications in the fortress-
system.56 Elements in the late Carolingian administrative system
52
Capitularia Regum Francorum, II, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause. (Mon. Germ.
Hist., Legum Sect. II), Hannover 1890, pp. 317-8.
53
The questionnaire preserved in the Inquisitio Eliensis is most conveniently available
in W. Stubbs, Select Charters, 9th ed., Oxford 1901, p. 101.
54
Ed. F. Grat, J. Vielliard and S. Clemencet, Paris 1964, pp. 152-3.
55
Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, as at n. 3, p. 138, translated in D. Whitelock,
D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 2nd impr. London 1965,
pp. 88-89: '1008 In this year the king ordered that ships should be built unremittingly
all over England'. '1009 In this year the ships we mentioned above were ready'. (For
variations in the text and disputed points of translation, see Plummer's commentary
and the works cited below). For evidence of the existence of ship-service related to
hidage (and its probably antedating 1008 in some form) see Hollister, Anglo-Saxon
Military Institutions, as at n. 4, pp. 103-15; F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs,
Manchester 1952, pp. 266-7 and F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, as at n.
21, II. 2, s. v. Schiff.
56
For Danegeld see n. 3 above; for the coinage pp. 186-8 below. The most interest-
evidence for modification of the fortress-system is that for the fortification of South
Cadbury with a stone wall some twelve hundred yards in circumference, dated with
some confidence by numismatic evidence to 1009-19, L. Alcock, By South Cadbury is
that Camelot... The Excavation of Cadbury Castle 1966-70, London 1972, cf. M. Diddle in
The Archaelogy of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Wilson, as at n.8, pp. 140-41 and references.
which, though recognised, tend to be brushed somewhat on one side
because they did not have a future, gather more weight when one looks
at England, where they did. Most important are levies of taxation to
pay Danegeld. These, recorded twelve or thirteen times between 845
and 926, are mentioned by Professor Ganshof 'for the sake of
completeness', though he regards them as unimportant in relation to
royal power because the money went to Danes. This does not alter
the fact that rulers who could raise such taxes were powerful in a way in
which their successors, south of the Channel, are not known to have
been.
The English evidence raises questions about their tenth and eleventh
century Capetian successors also. Had not the Domesday survey been
made and had many of the twelfth century records of the Exchequer
survived the English evidence would have resembled more closely that
from other states, and English administration would have looked more
as theirs looks. It is therefore a question how far the apparent differences
between English administration and that elsewhere reflect no more than
differences in the survival of sources. In Flanders there is evidence for the
central fiscal administration's having developed from the late eleventh
century along the lines not dissimilar to those of the English;58 while in
Normandy the Exchequer can, at least in the twelfth century, reasonably
be understood as developingparipassu with its English counterpart. 5 But
what of the Capetian lands? No records of a 'comptabilite central'
survive from before the reign of Philip Augustus. It is thus unsurprising
that there is virtually no discussion of financial administration in recent
works on Capetian government.60 Professor Lemarignier is hesitant, and
apprehensive of anachronism, in even using the word 'administration' in
relation to later eleventh century Capetian government.61Professors Lot
and Fawtier adopted a rather different approach. 'Des 1190, au moins, il
existe un compte des recettes des bailliages et des prevotes royales. II n'y a
57
E. Joranson, The Danegeld in France, Rock Island 1923; Ganshof, The Carolingians
and the Prankish Monarchy, as at n. 51, p. 100.
58
Bryce (Lyon) and Adrian Verhulst, Medieval Finance. A Comparison of Financial
Institutions in Northwestern Europe, Bruges 1967, esp. Chapter II. Although the sources
for Flemish financial administration before the Grote Brief of 1187 are sparse indeed (the
charter to the Provost of St. Donatian, 1089, a fragment of an account of 1140 and the
information provided by Galbert of Bruges provide almost all there is) these survivals,
with the providential preservation of the Grote Brief (otherwise no comparable account
survives before 1255) suffice to show that there was quite a sophisticated 'comptabilite
centrale' early in the twelfth century. Our knowledge hangs on a narrow thread and owes
much to chance.
59
Lyon and Verhulst, Medieval Finance, as at n. 58, pp. 41-52 for the literature on the
Norman Exchequer.
60
J. F. Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capetiens (987-1108), Paris
1965, E. Bournazel, Le gouvernement capetien au XIF siecle (1108-1180), Paris 1975.
61
Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal, as at n. 60, p. 157.
pas de raison pour que Louis VII ait innove en ces matieres. II est
vraisemblable que la monarchic a eu une comptabilite, plus ou moins
developpee, pour les revenus de son domaine ap artir de 1'avenment de
Hugues Capet; et comme celui-ci n'a voulu faire et fait que ce que
faisaient ses predecesseurs . . . les origines de la compatbilite royale
francaise se perdent dans la nuit des temps.' 62 In the light of the English
evidence their approach seems the more attractive. That Anglo-Norman
and French government were very different hardly needs demonstration;
but it is above all in relation to the 'comptabilite centrale' that the
possibility that there were at least broad similarities becomes pressing. It
seems that Louis VII's income at least was comparable to Henry II's.63
Even if his immediate predecessors had less (and it is not clear that their
income was of a different order of magnitude) both he and they drew
their revenues from sources which were both numerous and diverse. It is
easier to believe that there was a fairly developed 'comptabilite centrale'
than that fiscal administration was a matter entirely of memory and rules
of thumb.64 That is to say that administration may have had an early role
in the development of Capetian power whose possible importance
cannot be dismissed on the ground that it appears largely unknowable. It
could be, for example, that the appearance of 'prevots' and
'mandements' (not improbably related, as Professor Lemarignier has
suggested65) in the later eleventh century indicates administrative
development on a substantial scale.
Comparison can never prove; but it can strengthen possibilities. A
case of particular relevance in the present context is that of Normandy.
Here a key problem is that of how far any of the framework of
Carolingian government could have survived the dark and disrupted
generations after 911.66 One may compare East Anglia, under Danish
rule from 870 to <:.918. During that period no charters were produced
which have survived, and no narrative source. The episcopal succession
was broken and the monasteries destroyed. Nevertheless, and largely
thanks to Domesday Book, it is possible to be nearly certain that
important elements in its system of local government and assessment
62
F. Lot and R. Fawtier, Histoire des institutionsfranchises au moyen age, II Paris 1958, pp.
185-6.
63
M. Pacaut, Louis VII et son royaume, Paris 1964, pp. 119-60. J. F. Benton, The
Revenue of Louis VII', Speculum 42 (1967), pp. 84-91.
64
Lyon and Verhulst, Medieval Finance, as at n. 58, p. 50 are adamant that the Capetain
central financial administration developed later than that of Flanders or England but the
only evidence they have which is not ex silentio is an inference from the greater simplicity
of the French system of farms as it appears in 1202-3.
65
Le gouvernement royal, as at n. 60, pp. 157-62.
66
The most recent survey is J. Le Patourel, The Norman Empire, Oxford 1976, pp. 3-
5.
survived through the period of Danish rule.67 Indeed one of the most
striking features of recent work on early institutions in England is the
extent to which it suggest the extreme resilience of certain structures of
local government through manifold political vicissitudes. For example,
it seems much more likely than not that much in the organisation of
northern England in the early medieval period was of pre-Saxon origin,
successive Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian conquests and reconquests
notwithstanding.68 A complication if one is considering the relevance
of English evidence to Norman possibilities is that in parts at least of the
Danelaw the Danes probably introduced elaborate assessment systems
of their own.69 This does not alter the assistance which English
evidence gives to those disinclined to understand the early
administrative history of Normandy in terms of tabula rasa or of chaos.
To consider the transmission and diffusion of administrative
techniques is to realise how little we know of what may have been.
Even in the oft quoted case of the sealed writ, where there is something
of a consensus that an English development was directly or indirectly
influential in many parts of Europe in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, involved in its antecedents is the 'letter close', with a history
going back at least to the eighth century, and a possible significance in
Carolingian government much more considerable than the tiny number
of surviving examples prima facie suggests.70 At another level consider
the problems raised by the Danish assessment system in terms ofherred
and bol. It bears obvious similarities to the English system of hundreds
and hides. The question of how far these are systems with common and
distant Germanic origins and how far the Danish system reflects a
major administrative reorganisation, say by Cnut, under English
influence, is probably insoluble.71
Perhaps the most interesting case is that ofrenovatio monetae. It is well
known that in Germany, and in other areas in both eastern and western
67
R. Welldon Finn, Domesday Studies, The Eastern Counties, London 1967, pp. 105-21;
G. C. Homans, 'The Frisians in East Anglia' Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. 10 (1957), pp. 189-
206; R. H. C. Davis, The Kalendar of Abbot Samson', Camden Soc. 3rd ser., 84 (1954),
pp. XI-XLVII.
68
G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots, London 1973, pp. 7-68.
69
C. Hart, The Hidation of Huntingdonshire', Proc. Cambridge Antiquarian Soc. 6 1
(1968), pp. 55-66 and his The Hidation of Northamptonshire, as at n. 9, pp. 43-45; C. F.
Slade, The Leicestershire Survey, Leicester 1956, p. 77.
70
R. A. Fletcher, 'Diplomatic and the Cid revisited: the Seals and Mandates of
Alfonso VII', Jowm. of Medieval Hist. 2 (1976), p. 330 and refs.; P. Chaplais, The Letter
from Bishop Wealdhere of London to Archbishop Brihtwold of Canterbury: the
earliest original Letter Close extant in the West', in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and
Libraries: Essays presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson, London
1978, pp. 3-23 and Journ. Soc. of Archivists III. 4,i as at n. 30 above, p. 169.
71
L. Musset, Les peuples scandinaves au moyen age, Paris 1951, pp. 88-90; for the
possibility of yet further complications, G. F. Ward, The English Danegeld and the
Russian Dan', in American Slavic and East European Review 13 (1954), pp. 299-318.
Europe, from about the twelfth century, many rulers exploited the
currency by requiring that all the coins in circulation should be with-
drawn at intervals, sometimes frequent intervals, and a new coin-type
substituted.72 It is also known that on several occasions (the last in 864)
Carolingian rulers sought to withdraw all the coin in circulation and to
replace it by a new type.73 It used to be usual to see no connection
between the Carolingian recoinages and the later renovationes. It has
become harder to do so since it has been discovered that the late Anglo-
Saxon kings carried out the system of renovatio on a very large scale.74
After the recoinage of 975 (perhaps 973) the whole coinage was with-
drawn at regular intervals, first of seven years, later of less, and replaced
by a new type, sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier than its predeces-
sor. The evidence of hoards is that, particularly in the first generations,
the withdrawals were to a large extent effective. The system was con-
tinued after the Conquest, though simplified by general adherence to a
standard weight for the penny, and finally abandoned in 1158. Renovatio
on the scale on which the Saxons carried it out was a major piece of
administration, involving a coinage of many millions of silver pennies
and the control of about sixty mints. It is striking, and a further illu-
stration of the danger of resting negative conclusions on early admini-
stration on deductions from silence that it would be impossible to learn
from written sources that this elaborate and sophisticated system of
managing the currency existed. It is the coins themselves which prove it.
It is hard to believe that so complicated a system was simply invented by
the English. There surely must be some connection with the Carolingian
currency changes. Consider how the Edict of Pitres lays down the pre-
cise techniques for changing the currency and numerous other resem-
blances between English and Carolingian government. The question
of the ultimate origins of the system is of obvious interest and import-
72
A. Suchodolski, 'Renovatio Monetae in Poland in the Twelfth Century', Wiadotnsci
Numizmatcyczne 5 (1961), pp. 57-75 of the supplement, maintains that the system was
introduced in Bohemia and Hungary in the late llth century, and in Germany and
Poland in the twelfth. S. Bolin, 'Tax Money and Plough Money', Scandinavian Econ.
Hist. Rev. 2 (1954), pp. 3-21 argues for its introduction into Denmark c. 1075 (pp. 15-
16). F. von Schrotter Worterbuch der Munzkunde, reprint Berlin 1970, s. v.
'Munzverrufung' provides a general, if somewhat outdated survey.
73
E. g.: R. Doehaerd, 'Les reformes monetaires carolingiennes', Annales, E. S. C. 7
(1952), pp. 13-20.
74
The most recent general account of the late Anglo-Saxon coinage is [R. H.] M.
Dolley, 'The Coins', in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Wilson, as at n. 8,
esp. pp. 358-60, giving full references to earlier work, among which R. H. M. Dolley
and D. M. Metcalf, 'The Reform of the English Coinage under Edgar' in Anglo-Saxon
Coins, ed. R. H. M. Dolley, London 1961, pp. 133-68 and H. Bertil and A. Peterson,
Anglo-Saxon Currency. From King Edgar's Reform to the Norman Conquest, Lund 1969, are
of special importance. For the post-Conquest coinage see [R. H.] M. Dolley, The
Norman Conquest and the English Coinage, London 1966.
75 Capitularia H, ed. Boretius and Krause, as at n. 52, pp. 314-7.
ance but apparently remains mysterious. Looking forward, it seems
highly probable that there is a connection between English renovationes
and the system as it appears later elsewhere in Europe.
It is likely that renovatio monetae is characteristic of much else in the
history of administration in western Europe. Elaborate techniques were
used of which written sources of the ordinary kinds do not necessarily
tell us; and what we know of the origin and diffusion of techniques is
little more than enough to indicate the depth of the problems and the
width of the possibilities.76 No doubt much in Anglo-Norman England
was unique. The juxtaposition there of structures and systems which go
back to the Carolingian age, or beyond, with others which were
characteristic of the medieval state marks a crucial stage in that
singularly continuous development which, as Stubbs showed, links
modern institutions to those of the Dark Ages in a way unparalleled
elsewhere. But the chief interest of Anglo-Norman England in relation
to the administrative history of western Europe does not lie in the
recognition that England differed from other states, but in the question
of how far it differed. The extent to which knowledge of what England
was like depends on sources of kinds which do not survive elsewhere
suggests that of primary value in the study of administration in early
Europe is difficillima ars nesciendi.
76
A curious instance of alleged transmission of law from one country to another is
the observation in 'Leges Edwardi Confessoris' (a compilation of the earlier twelfth
century) a propos of the legislation on usury, there attributed to Edward: Hoc autem
dicebat sepe se audisse in curia regis Francorum, dum ibi moratus esset . . ., Liebermann,
Gesetze, as at n. 21, I, p. 668.
H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England 500-1087 (1984) is a balanced

survey. Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King /Ethelred 'the Unready' 978—W16
(Cambridge, 1980) is important on the production of royal documents. To the
bibliography on the late Saxon burhs now add C. A. Ralegh Radford, 'The Pre-
Conquest Boroughs of England, Ninth to Eleventh Century', Proc. British Academy, Ixiv
(1978), pp. 131-54. M. K. Lawson, 'The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the
Reigns of Ethelred II and Cnut', English Hist. Rev., xcix (1984), pp. 721-38 is very
important. The latest work of D. M. Metcalf, 'Continuity and Change in English
Monetary History c.973-1076', British NumismaticJourn., 1 (1980), pp. 20-49, li (1981),
pp. 52-90 marks new advances. On renovalio monetae in general see T. N. Bisson,
Conservation of Coinage. Monetary Exploitation and its Restraint in France, Catalonia and
Aragon c.A.D. lOOO-c.1225 (Oxford, 1979). A series of articles by P. Nightingale has
illuminated in important ways the connections between government, coinage and
economic management: 'Some London Moneyers and Reflections on the Organisation
of English Mints in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', Numismatic Chron., cxlii (1982),
pp. 34-50; 'The Ora, the Mark and the Mancus; Weight Standards and the Coinage in
Eleventh Century England', Ibid., cxlni (1983), pp. 248-57, cxliv (1984), pp. 234-48;
Dr. Nightingale here provides a convincing explanation of the 20d. ora which differs
from that accepted above, p. 156; The Evolution of New Weight Standards and the
Creation of New Monetary and Commercial Links in Northern Europe from the Tenth
Century to the Twelfth Century', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2ndser., xxxviii (1985), pp. 192-209.
Dr. J. A. Green's thesis (above, n.27) is complete: 'Some Aspects of Royal
Administration in England during the Reign of Henry I' (Oxford D. Phil., 1975). Some
of its conclusions are published in: J. A. Green, 'The Last Century of Danegeld', English
Hist. Rev., xcvi (1981), pp. 241-58; The Earliest Surviving Pipe Roll', Bull. Inst. Hist.
Res. Iv (1982), pp. 1-17; The Sheriffs of William the Conqueror', Proc. Battle Abbey
Conference, v (1982), pp. 129-45. W. L. Warren, The Myth of Norman Administrative
Efficiency', Trans. RoyalHist. Soc., 5th ser. xxxiv(1984), pp. 113-32is very stimulating.
For Professor M. Biddle's observations on royal itineraries (cf. n.40 above) see F.
Barlow, et. al., Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, as at n.12 above, pp. 295—6. M. T.
Clanchy From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307 (1979) is full of interest on
many of themes discussed above.
4. David and Goliath at the beginning of Psalm 101 in a Psalter produced in
Christ Church, Canterbury between 1012 and 1023. (British Library, MS.
Arundel 155,f. 93r;292x 170mm.)
12
England, France, Flanders and Germany

in the Reign ofEthelred II:
Some Comparisons and Connections
In seeking to do something to put Ethelred's reign in its European

context it is natural to begin by asking how far the king was like other
kings of his day and how far the style of his regime and life resembled
theirs. To consider in this connection Robert the Pious, king of France
from 996 to 1031 as he appears in the Vita written not long after his
death by Helgaud, a monk of Fleury, is to discover an apparent
contrast.1 Helgaud presents Robert not only as literate, reading his
psalter every day, but as learned, sapientissimus Htterarum, educated in
the liberal arts by Gerbert.2 He shows him as very generous to the
church, of course; keeping up a sanctorum collegium clericorum (apparently
of household clerks) and giving lavishly to monasteries, not only to his
favourite St Aignan but to many others, and the gifts which are chiefly
emphasised are not of land, but of treasures.3 His holiness was such that
although Helgaud does not quite call him a saint he ascribes the power
of healing to him, and it is with this that the continuous tradition of les
rois thaumaturges begins.4
So far, not much like our Ethelred , or so it seems. But we should not
be too sure. It is perfectly possible that Ethelred was literate. Nor is it
impossible that a talented clerk could have done as good a job for his
memory as the Encomiast of Emma did for Cnut's or the author of the
Vita Edwardi for Edward the Confessor's. It may be that Ethelred had
not been generous enough to earn such treatment, but the extent of his
gifts to the church remains to be determined; if there was such a Vita it
could easily have been lost; Helgaud's survives only in the author's
manuscript. 5 It would be foolish to exclude the obvious probability that
Ethelred as an unsuccessful king was one whom no one sought to
honour. But we should at least bear in mind that kings in this period can
look very different in different types of source and that for Ethelred we
have some types, but not others.
1
HelgauddeFleury, ViedeRobertlePieux, ed. R. H. BautierandG. Labory (Paris, 1965).
2
Ibid., p. 60.
3
Ibid., passim, esp. pp. 68, 72, 86, 88, 108.
4
M. Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges (repr., Paris, 1961), pp. 36-41.
5
For /Ethelred's gifts now (1985) see Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Aithelred
the Unready 978-1016 (Cambridge, 1980).
191
There are aspects of Robert's life as described by Helgaud which come
closer to Ethelred's. The shadow of murder falls. We learn of twelve men
who came to assassinate the king one Easter;6 though it is Glaber who
tells us how a party sent by Fulk Nerra ambushed and killed Robert's
friend Hugh of Beauvais before his eyes.7 It is a reminder that there is
nothing special to England or to Ethelred's reign about such incidents as
the murder of ^thelm or of the sons of Arngrim. 8 Even the killing of
Edward the Martyr was not altogether extraordinary. Richard I of
Normandy upon succeeding as a minor to his father William Longsword
(murdered at the instigation of Arnoul I of Flanders) was said to have had
a narrow escape, if not from being killed, at least from being deliberately
crippled.9 Helgaud is less than open about the king's marital affairs. He
counts it for virtue that Robert put away an unnamed woman related to
him in the prohibited degrees and describes his married life with
Constance with a mixture of unction and schadenfreude. That is to say that
he does not reveal that the unnamed lady was Robert's second wife,
Bertha, and that he says nothing of his first wife, Rozala/Susanna, the
widow of Arnoul II of Flanders, to whom, probably old enough to be his
mother, Robert was married off within months of her husband's death.10
Helgaud's suppression of Robert's first marriage recalls the Encomiast's
failure to mention that Emma was Ethelred's wife before she was Cnut's
and indicates that such unions were not universally regarded as proper.
That they took place is an indication of what can readily be seen in
Constance's attempts to determine the succession after Robert's death, as
in the aftermath of the reigns of Edgar, Ethelred and Cnut (or for that
matter of Otto II), the importance in this period of great dowagers.
If two of the striking elements in the prelude to Ethelred's reign, a
murder and a dominant dowager, are easy to parallel elsewhere, so too is
the third, a royal saint. Such saints seem to be particularly common in the
period c. 950 to c. 1100. Of Ethelred's contemporaries Robert II was
regarded as all but a saint, Henry II of Germany did come to be regarded
as saint. Then we have St Olaf, Edward the Confessor, St Cnut and his
son St Charles the Good. The Encomiast regards Alfred the Atheling as a
saint.11 By Ethelred's reign there was an attempt to get up a cult of Edgar;
6
Helgaud, op. n't., p. 62.
7
Raoul Glaber, Les cinq livres de ses histoires, ed. M. Prou (Paris, 1886), p. 58.
8
The circumstances of Îthelm's murder as described by 'Florence of Worcester'
resembled those of Ralph's, Chronicon ex Chronids, ed. B. Thorpe (2 vols. 1848-9), i, p.
158.
9
William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. J. Marx (Rouen and Paris,
1914), pp. 47-8.
10
Helgaud, op. cit., pp. 92-6, C. Pfister, Etudes sur le regne de Robert le Pieux
(Bibliotheque de 1'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Ixiv (1885)), pp. 41-84.
11
Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell (Camden Soc., 3rd Ser., Ixxii (1949)),
p. 44.
England, France, Flanders and Germany 193
12
similarly in Normandy for William Longsword. Sanctity was a kind ot
counterpart to violence: Cnut, Charles, Alfred and William, like the
young Edward, were all recruited to the noble army of martyrs at the
point of the assassin's sword. At the same time royal women who soon
came to be regarded as saints were numerous. For example three of
Edward the Martyr's fairly close female relations came into this
category.13 There was nothing new about royal saints, men or women.
But they seem to be particularly numerous in this period as compared to
the Carolingian. For example, though it is easy to find English royal
women of the seventh century who were regarded as saints, it is much
harder in the ninth. The first such in the tenth century seems to be
Edmund's widow Aelfgifu.14 Ethelred belonged to a generation in
which royal persons seem to have been creeping nearer to God, if not in
their lives, then in their Vitae.
The period seems to have seen a striking number of inventions and
translations of saints and relics. Glaber describes a remarkable wave of
such in France in 1008, the archbishop of Sens making a good start by
finding part of Moses's wand, long lost.15 In England also there seem to
have been a number of inventions and translations and the tract on the
resting place of the English saints which Liebermann published reflects
just that pride and interest in the range and multiplicity of saints which
Helgaud and Glaber show so strongly. 16 Nothing could be more absurd
than to claim novelty for such emotions and it is hard to quantify
inventions and translations because our knowledge is largely
determined by the availability of sources (which, however, in itself tell
us something). But Dr Christine Fell in a paper on the English hagio-
graphical tradition has produced an excellent case for there having been a
strong revival of hagiographical writing in this period and it looks as if
what she describes and what Glaber describes may be part of one
12
For Edgar see William of Malmesbury, De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecdesiae in
Adam of Domerham, Historia de Rebus Gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford,
1727), i, pp. 90-91. (I owe this reference and some others to F. Barlow, The English
Church 1000-1066 (1966)). For William Longsword see Dudo of St Quentin, De Moribus
et Actisprimorum Normanniae Ducum, ed. J. Lair (Caen, 1865), p. 208.
13
Vita Adwardi Regis, ed. F. Barlow (1962), p. xii.
14
Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle (2 vols.,
Oxford, 1892), i, p. 113, The Chronicle ofAthelweard, ed. A. Campbell (1962), p. 54.
15
Glaber, op. cit., pp. 68-71.
16
F. Liebermann, Die HeiligenEnglands (Hanover, 1889). I understand Mr D. Rollason
is shortly to publish his conclusions on the date of this work. The earliest mss are of the
earlier eleventh century, N. F. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon,
(Oxford, 1957), nos. 49B, 274, cf. 138. Cf. Chronicon Abbatiae Ramseiensis, ed. W. D.
Macray (Rolls Ser. 1886), pp. 114-5, Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson (2
vols. Rolls Ser., 1858), ii, pp. 280-81, M. Biddlein Tenth Century Studies, ed. D. Parsons
(1975), pp. 136-7.
17
movement. As in this so in other ways England seems to fit into a
wider pattern, how neatly one cannot tell because of the difficulty of
distinguishing between differences in circumstances and differences in
sources. For example in considering the 'anti-monastic reaction' it
would seem unwise altogether to lose sight of the anti-monastic
reaction in France most strikingly expressed by Adalberon of Laon in
his poem attacking the Cluniacs, luxurious, grasping, led to battle by
their king Odilo. Other questions easily suggest themselves. Is not
the legislation of the later years of Ethelred similar in some respects to
that produced abroad in connection with the Peace of God? Would it
not be more helpful in attempting to understand Dunstan to conisder
how far he was like a great continental prelate such as Adalberon of
Rheims rather than to repeat how far he seems unlike Ethelwold?
It is easy to ask questions. One way of getting on to a more solid
footing is to consider the Chronicle of .XEthelweard. This was, as is
well-known, written early in the reign of Ethelred for Matilda,
granddaughter of Otto I and to whom vÊthelweard was distantly
related. It is important both as evidence for fairly close connection
between England and north Germany at this period and in showing
how Êthelweard's interests correspond to those of others elswhere.
Comparison with the work of Widukind is particularly suggestive.
Widukind was a monk of Corvey, some seventy five miles from Essen.
He wrote his Historia Saxonum for Matilda, abbess of Quedlinburg a
decade or so before ^thelweard wrote his history for Matilda's half-
niece. In both works the presence of the noble lady is marked. Each of
Widukind's three books had a dedication and a poem of praise for
Matilda; each of ^thelweard's four books begins with a separate,
though less grand, dedication to his Matilda.20 Each is trying to describe
17
C. E. Fell, 'Edward King and Martyr and the Anglo-Saxon Hagiographic
Tradition', Ethelred the Unready, Papers from the Millenary Conference, edited by David
Hill, (British Archaeological Reports, British Series 59, 1978), pp. 1-13.
18
G. A. Hiickel, 'Les poemes satiriques d'Adalberon', Bibliotheque de la Faculte des
Lettres de VUniversite de Paris, xiii (1901), pp. 49 sqq.
19
Ed. A. Campbell, op. tit. It is clear (p. 1) that ^thelweard had sent at least one letter
to Matilda and had received at least one from her before he started to write. L. Whitbread
has conjectured that the account of Otto II's campaign of 982 in the C version of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may have derived from a communication from Matilda to
^thelweard, including as it does a note of the death of their relative Otto of Swabia,
'yEthelweard and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', Engl. Hist. Rev. Ixxiv (1959), pp. 577-89.
The evidence is no more than circumstantial, but it is in any case of interest that the C
version should contain an account of this campaign, which, if grossly misleading in
reporting Otto as victorious, is fairly detailed and appears, as Whitbread (pp. 577-9)
points out, to have been incorporated in the Chronicle before news of Otto's death in
December 983 had arrived.
20
W. Wattenback and R. Holtzmann, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, i
(Cologne and Graz, 1967), pp. 26-34.
the history of his people from its origins, with particular emphasis on
the glories of the dynasty now ruling. yEthelweard seems occasionally
to modify the vernacular chronicle which was his principal source in
ways which suggest a somewhat different view of kings and of
kingship from that of its authors. He gives an account of Alfred's
services to learning, as the Chronicle does not, and while, in describing
the accession of Edward the Elder the Chronicle simply says feng
Eadweard his sunn to rice, he says coronatur ipse stemate regalia primatis
electis, a statement which recent research on the coronation ordo
suggests may not have been anachronistic.21 There is other evidence for
an interest in history in England at this time. The one copy of Asser's
life of Alfred which is known to have survived till modern times seems
to have been written in Ethelred's reign, possibly for the royal nunnery
at Shaftesbury. 22 Nor were such interests confined to England and
Germany. For example Dudo of St Quentin's history of the dukes of
Normandy was written not long after 1015 and reflects interests and
aims broadly similar to those of Widukind and .Êthelweard. (It was
written for Ethelred's wife's uncle and dedicated to Adalberon of Laon.)
Êthelweard's connection with Essen is part of a larger cultural
relationship between England and parts of Germany. It is not possible
to be sure how extensive this was, for the fragmentary evidence is
capable of very varied interpretation. Perhaps the most striking
fragment is the fact that one of the oldest manuscripts of the Old Saxon
Biblical epic, the Heliand, was possibly written in England in the late
tenth century and has certainly been here since about that time.2" A
21
Op. cit., p. 51, Plummer and Earle, op. at., i, pp. 92-3, cf. C. E. Hohler, 'Some
Service Books of the Later Saxon Church', Tenth Century Studies, op. cit., pp. 67-9. (It
is also of interest that yEthelweard calls Offa vir mirabilis (p. 24) - not the Chronicle's
line by any means.)
~ Shaftesbury had been founded by Alfred and regarded itself, quite likely rightly,
as having been given a hundred hides by him Asser, Life of King Alfred ed. W. H.
Stevenson (new impr. Oxford, 1959), p 98, A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters
(Cambridge, 1956), no. XIII (cf. Sawyer, op. cit., no. 357), C. Fell, Edward, King and
Martyr (Leeds Texts and Monographs, New Ser. 1971), pp. xviii-xix). Humphry
Wanley, as reported by Francis Wise, said that the first hand of the, since burned,
Cotton Ms. was of circiter annum domini WOO vel 1001 (ed. W. H. Stevenson, op. cit., p.
xliv, n. 4). What is known of Wanley's methods suggests that he based his observation
on comparison with a hand which he knew to be of that date and his '1000 vel 1001'
suggests reference to a document dated 1001. Only two Anglo-Saxon charters
definitely dated to that year are known and it has been suggested that he based his
remark on comparison with Cotton Charter Augustus ii, 22 (ibid., pp. xiv, n. 1, xxxiii,
n. 1), the only one of the two to survive as an original. But it is curious that the other
charter of this date is the well-known one granting Bradford-on-Avon to Shaftesbury
and it is reasonable to entertain the supposition that the original of this survived long
enough for Wanley to base his dating on it.
23
Ker, op. cit., no. 137. At about the same time there was another Old Saxon
Biblical poem known in England, for the second version of the Old English Genesis is
in part a translation of the Old Saxon poem of the same subject.
curious thing is that James, listing the manuscript in the seventeenth
century, called it Liber Regis Canuti. Nothing about the manuscript as it
is now indicates why he should have done so. R. Drogereit argued that
the Heliand probably originated at Werden.24 If so this would relate
suggestively to Êthelweard's relationship with Essen, for Essen had
close links with Werden, just on the opposite bank of the Ruhr.
Drogereit's case has been powerfully opposed, though it remains
possible that Werden was the home of the poem. In any case
Drogereit's account of the other connections or possible connections
between Werden, Essen and England is of interest, particularly in
relation to the maintenance of Anglo-Saxon cults in Germany (Werden
was an Anglo-Saxon foundation of c. 800) and the apparent appearance
of specifically Werden cults in south west England in the early eleventh
century.26 There were Continental Saxons in England in this period
including, probably, the author of the first life of Dunstan ('B'), and,
even if Mr Lapidge is right in reversing Stubbs' careful assessment of
the balance of probabilities as in favour of this man's having been a
Continental Saxon, 'B' had in any case probably been connected with
the Saxon Ebrachar, bishop of Liege 959-71.27 (This is a reminder that
24
Drogereit, Werden und der Heliand (Essen, 1951), esp. pp. 83-111 and 'Sachsen und
Anglesachsen', Niedersdchsisches Jahrb.f. Landesgeschichte, 21 (1949), esp. pp. 24-62.
25
B. Bischoff, 'Palaographische Fragen deutscher Denkmaler der Karolingerzeit',
Fruhmittelalterliche Studien, v (1971), pp. 127-9 (I owe this reference to the kindness of
Mr [C.] P. Wormald). But see alsoj. Knight Bostock, A Handbook on Old High German
Literature, 2nd ed. rev. K. C. King and D. R. McLintock (Oxford, 1976), p. 180).
26
Werden und der Heliand, esp. pp. 108-10, 'Sachsen und Angelsachsen', esp. pp. 27-
31. The west-work at Werden has been suggested as a parallel to that of the Old Minster
at Winchester — though there were, of course, other comparable west-works overseas
(M. Biddle, as atn.16 above, p. 138).
27
Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs (Rolls Ser. 1874), pp. xi-xxii, M. Lapidge,
'The Hermeneutic Style in the Tenth Century Latin Literature', Anglo-Saxon England,
iv (1975), p. 81 n. 2. Mr Lapidge's rebuttal of Stubbs depends positively on the Old
English rather than Old Saxon spelling 'hearpam' in the phrase 'cytharam suam quam
lingua paterna hearpam vocamus' but this hardly serves conclusively to refute Stubb's
suggestion (p. xii) that 'The terms "lingua paterna" and "lingua Saxonica" are used
more generically for the common tongue of the continental and insular Saxon', granted
that no great weight can be attached to such a choice of spelling in a manuscript
tradition transmitted in all probability via Anglo-Saxon scribes. Negatively his case
depends on two instances to refute Stubb's opinion that if the author is insular it is
surprising that he should call himself 'vilis Saxonum indigens', 'a form which is
scarcely ever used by an English writer without some qualifying limitation as in Angul-
Saxones, West Saxones or Orientales Saxones' (p. xiii). Two instances hardly suffice,
especially when one is from a much earlier source and the other is an exceptional
instance from ^thelweard who in general does use Saxones to indicate either
Continental Saxons, or Saxons in the invasion period. It is noteworthy that he even
calls the West Saxons Occidentales Angli, though this involves departing from usages of
the the vernacular chronicle which he was following, e.g. pp. 18, 28, 32, 35, 40. For the
connection with Ebrachar see Memorials, pp. 385-8. Cf. Barlow, The English Church,
1000-1066, pp. 16-17.
the question of relations with Saxony at this time is complicated by
there having been Saxon bishops in Lotheringia, e.g. Volkmar, abbot
of Werden 971-74, bishop of Utrecht 977-90.28)
Manuscripts, cults and poems are one thing, the realities of power
another. To ask such very simple questions as 'In what sense could or
did Ethelred have a foreign policy?' or 'How continuously was he in
contact with foreign powers and manoevring to gain what he could
from them?' is to realise how wide are the gaps in our knowledge. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says virtually nothing of the involvements of
English kings with their Continental neighbours. Sparse though its
record is for much of the tenth century it is still surprising how it is
silent on events which one would have expected to seem of great
importance to contemporaries. Thus it provides no contemporary
account of the series of marriages of Edward the Elder's daughters to
the greatest potentates in Europe, nor for that matter of the marriage of
Alfred's daughter Êlfthryth to Baldwin II of Flanders.29 It is not as if
some of these marriages did not have political consequences. Athelstan
sheltered his nephew the later Louis IV, played an important part in his
accession to the French throne in 936, and sent a fleet to help him in
939. His brother Edmund threatened to intervene against Hugh the
Great on behalf of Louis in 946. J Otto I was heavily involved in the
affairs of France at this time and it was probably in connection with this
crisis that the two embassies to Edmund from the regnum oriens, pre-
sumably Germany, came, which are mentioned in the first life of
Dunstan.32 One of them came to put what Stubbs calls a 'matrimonial
proposition'. That these embassies are known only through incidental
references in a saint's life is a reminder of how much diplomatic activity
there may have been of which we know nothing. It is likely, for example,
that such activity lies behind the commercial privileges which 'the men
of the Emperor' are found enjoying in Ethelred's fourth law-code.33
28
Werden und der Heliand, p. 108. (Arnoul II of Flanders, for whose important
English contacts see below, was partly Saxon, for his mother Matilda was the daughter of
Hermann Billung.)
29
The reference to Edith's marriage to Otto I in the 'Mercian Register' is almost
certainly simply the product of a guess by a later copyist, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
ed. D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker (2nd impr. 1965), p. 68, no. 9. The
C version does refer to this marriage in its annal for 982; see n. 19 above.
30
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, 1971), pp. 346-7.
31
Ibid., p. 360; R. Holtzmann, Geschichte der Sachsischen Kaiserzeit (2 vols. reprint,
Munich, 1971), i pp. 128-30; Richer, Historiarum Libri HII, ed. G. Waitz (Hanover,
1877), pp. 64-5.
32
Memorials . . . pp. 23, 46, xvi.
33
A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I
(Cambridge, 1925). (Similarly with the privileges of the men from Normandy, France
and elsewhere.) For a suggestion about who 'the men of the Emperor' may have been,
Drogereit, 'Sachsen und Angelsachsen', p. 54.
That such privileges could be treated for at a high level we know from
Cnut's letter of 1027.34 Another instance of an embassy to England
known of only by a chance survival is that which Arnoul of Flanders (on
balance probably Arnoul II (964-88)) mentions in a letter to Dunstan as
about to be despatched.35 So, in considering Ethelred's reign and mis-
adventures, it is prudent to bear in mind that they may have a lost Euro-
pean and diplomatic dimension.
The actual evidence for Ethelred's relations with powers other than
the Danes and the Normans amounts to one sentence of Ralph Glaber's.
He says that Ethelred, Rudolph of Burgundy and Sancho of Navarre
sent gifts to Robert the Pious and sought his help.36 It would
undoubtedly have made sense for Ethelred to have sought Robert's
help, not least because of Robert's close relationship with Richard II of
Normandy. England had at least one steady stream of relationship with
Robert's dominions through the connection between Fleury and the
monasteries founded by Oswald. Abbo of Fleury was both well-known
in England and a prominent figure at Robert's court. A good example
of the maintenance of the link with Fleury is that, during the crisis of
Edward the Martyr's reign, Germanus, abbot of Winchcombe, once a
monk of Fleury, returned for a period to his old monastery.37 But of the
details of Ethelred's relationship with France and with Robert we can
recover nothing.
Where we can recover something is in relation to Normandy. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that the Danish fleet was in Normandy
in 1000, of Ethelred's marriage to Richard II's sister Emma in 1002 and
then of Ethelred's flight to Normandy in 1014.38 This account can be
filled out somewhat from other sources. The agreement of 991 between
34
Robertson, Laws . . . pp. 148-9.
35
Memorials, p. 360; for the date see P. Grierson, 'Relations between England and
Flanders before the Norman Conquest', Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. 4th Ser. xxiii (1941),
p. 91, n. 5.
36
Glaber, op. cit., p. 59.
37
Chronicon Abbatiae Ramseiensis, p. 73, D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and V. C. M.
London, The Heads of Religious Houses in England and Wales 940-1216, (Cambridge,
1972), p. 78. The important sacramentary, Orleans Ms. 127, produced at Winchcombe
before the end of the tenth century and later at Fleury, which had crossed the Channel
by 1009, is probably a relic of the link between the two houses, D. Gremont and Fr.
Donnat, 'Fleury, Le Mont Saint-Michel et 1'Angleterre a la fin du Xe siecle . . .',
Millenaire Monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, i, ed. J. Laporte (1966), pp. 751-93, N. R.
Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (2nd ed. 1964), p. 199. Manuscripts provide
other evidence for Englishmen on the Continent at this period; thus it seems likely that
c.1000 an itinerant Anglo-Saxon was responsible for illuminating manuscripts at
Fleury, St Berlin and elsewhere, A. Boutemy, 'Un monument capital de 1'enluminure
anglo-saxonne, le manuscrit 11 de Boulougne-sur-Mer', Cahiers de Civilisation
Medievale, i (1958), pp. 179-82, cf. F. Wormald, English Drawings of the Tenth and
Eleventh Centuries (1952), pp. 73-4, no. 45.
38
Plummer and Earle, op. cit., i, pp. 133, 134, 145.
Ethelred and Richard II made, according to the letter of John XV's in
which is preserved, at the instigation of the pope and with the aid of a
papal legate (Leo, abbot of St Boniface) relates to circumstances of
which otherwise nothing would be known. Ethelred and Richard
agreed to be at peace and not to shelter one another's enemies. Were it
not for this document we should not even know that they had been at
enmity. And why should John XV have intervened to make peace
between England and Normandy? A possible guess is that it had
something to do with the troubles over the see of Rheims which broke
out after the death of Adalberon in 989. The dates would fit well
enough. Hugh Capet's ambassadors left for Rome to seek help against
Arnoul in July 990. It was clear by the autumn that they were not going
to get it. If John had then sent Leo north of the Alps (as he used him on
another mission in connection with the Rheims dispute in 992) there
would have been time to have reached Ethelred by Christmas, when we
know him to have done so. All the same one would have thought that
John's interest at this time by no means lay in helping Hugh's ally
Richard to make peace with England.40
The next piece of additional evidence is provided by William of
Jumieges, writing in about 1075. He describes the defeat of an English
invasion of the Cotentin aimed at capturing Richard II, putting the
date not long after Emma's marriage to Ethelred in 1002.41 As often
with William's work it is hard to know quite what to make of what he
says. It would be imprudent to go much further than did Sir Frank
Stenton in his account of the passage: 'There was a tradition in
Normandy that . . .'42 But one can edge somewhat nearer to belief.
That the Cotentin as the most Danish part of Normandy might have
been the right part to invade and that the Nigel who is described as
leading resistance was a real man in the appropriate place does not get
us much further. 43 William's description of the Anglo-Saxon
39
Memorials, pp. 397-8. For (slightly later) references to Norman exiles in England
see L. Musset, 'Relations et echanges d'influences dans 1'Europe du Nord-Ouest (Xe—
XF siecles)', Cahiers d'Histoire Medievale, i (1958), p. 76. I regret that I have not seen R.
L. Graeme Ritchie, The Normans in England before Edward the Confessor (Exeter, 1948).
40
F. Lot, Etudes sur le regne de Hugues Capet et la Fin de Xe siecle (Bibliotheque de
L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, (Paris, 1903), pp. 14-30, 83-91, 249-65 (pp. 100-102, 103,
115 for later missions of Leo's).
41
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 76-77. A. Campbell, Encomium, p. xlii suggests
that the date indicated by William is wrong and that the incident probably belongs to
the period of hostility implied by the treaty of 991; but we do not know enough of the
course of relations between England and Normandy to judge what is plausible and
what not. Sudden reversals of policy were in any case common enough in the politics of
this period.
42
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1971), p. 397.
43
L. Delisle, Histoire du chateau . . . de Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (1867), p. 2. The
landing seems to have been near Val-de-Saire.
expedition is a shade more helpful. He says that Ethelred ordered a very
large number of ships to put to sea and a large number of milites from
his whole kingdom to join the fleet, appropriately equipped with
helmets and hauberks, on a day he ordained. The way in which the
collection of the fleet and the summons to the army are described
separately recalls the Chronicle annals for 999 ('the king . . .
determined they should be opposed by a naval force and also by a land
force') and for 1000 ('the king went into Cumberland and ravaged
nearly the whole of it ... and his ships went out round Chester').44
The reference to helmets and hauberks recalls the annal for 1008: 'The
king ordered . . . a helmet and a corselet from [every] eight hides'.43
Granted these similarities and that the Cotentin expedition would
represent the same kind of forward policy as that of 1000, it seems
reasonable to regard the story as at least something more than an empty
tradition.
William's next possibly hard piece of information comes in a longish,
though demonstrably inaccurate, account of the Danish wars in
England from the massacre of St Brice's Day (which could, incidentally,
be regarded as an indication of English administrative efficiency - what
other king of the time could have organised simultaneous massacres in
several places on the same day?) up to 1014. He says that at one stage
Swegn came from northern England, with a few men, to seek peace
with Richard. He got it and it was agreed that whatever the Danes
captured would be taken to Normandy for sale and that wounded
Danes would be tended in Normandy. 6 There is no other evidence
about this; though it is certainly true that the Danes needed somewhere
to sell their booty. Compare the E version of the Chronicle for 1048:
'and then they went East to Baldwin's country and sold whatever they
had got from their raid.'47 The next possible shred of evidence conies
from Henry of Huntingdon who says that in 1009 Ethelred sent to
Richard asking for his advice and help.48 It is plausible enough that he
did and the story is made the more plausible by Huntingdon's just
stating it as a bare fact without any attempt to weave it into a larger tale.
There are one or two other suggestive remarks in Continental sources.
Dudo, writing at about the end of Ethelred's reign puts into the mouth
of one of Richard I's enemies the words 'The English also are
obediently subject to Richard'.49 Doubtless they never had been; but
that Dudo should have put this statement in his book is a hint that there
was more to Anglo-Norman relations than we know. Glaber, writing a
44
Plummer and Earle, op. cit., p. 133.
45
Ibid., p. 138. (Translation, Whitelock, Douglas and Tucker.)
46
Op. cit., p. 80. Cf. A. Campbell, Encomium, p. xlii, n. 4.
47
Plummer and Earle, op. cit., p. 171.
48
Historia, ed. T. Arnold (Rolls Ser. 1879), p. 176.
49
Ed. Lair, op. cit., p. 265.
little later, gives an account of the accession and deeds of Cnut; he
emphasises the close relations between Cnut and Richard II and says that
during much of Cnut's reign if any crisis threatened the duke of Rouen a
numerous army was brought to his aid from over the sea.50 It is obvious
that most of the sources which supplement the account of Anglo-
Norman relations which appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are of
mixed and doubtful value. The sum of what they suggest is more
important and more credible than any particular scrap of alleged infor-
mation they proffer. It is, that involved in Ethelred's troubles with the
Danes may be a complex relationship with Normandy most of the details
of which are lost, but whose course could have been significant in the
determination of events.
The history of the connection between England and Normandy can
be taken a little further on the ecclesiastical side. The first reform of the
Norman monasteries came at the same time as and under some of the
same influence as that in England.51 Gerard of Brogne's disciple
Mainard became abbot of St Wandrille's in 960 and in 966, having
expelled a community of canons from Mont Saint-Michel, became
abbot there. St Ouen seems to have been reformed at about the same
time and this is probably reflected in a begging letter to Edgar from the
community there.5 They pray for him, they say, just as they do for
their own illustrious count, night and day. They have heard of his
generosity to all widows, orphans, churches and those in need. They
are themselves a church in need of restoration and invite a subscription.
(There is a similar letter to Edgar from the church of St Genevieve at
Paris, thanking him for a gift and asking for more.53) A quite different
connection with St Ouen appears in a post-Conquest story that Edgar
had actually bought the body of that saint from four clerks who had
brought it to England; he had at first found it hard to believe that it was
genuine, but upon two test cures being performed, concluded the trans-
action.54
50
Ed. Prou, op. cit., p. 29.
51
J. Laporte, 'Les origines du monachisme dans la province de Rouen', Revue
Mabillon, xxxi (1941), pp. 49-52.
52
Memorials, pp. 363-4; it is not clear from the letter whether it is from the reformed
or the unreformed community. The former seems more probable and if so this letter
helps to give some indication of the date of the reform of St Ouen about which there is
some doubt, Laporte, p. 52, J. F. Lemarignier, Les privileges d'exemption des abbayes
normandes (Paris, 1937), pp. 28-29, 38-39.
53
Memorials, pp. 366-8.
54
Edmeri Cantuariensis Cantoris Nova Opuscula de Sanctorum Venemtione, ed. A.
Wilmart, Rev. des Sciences Religieuses, xv (1935), pp. 362-4. For the cult of St Ouen at
Canterbury see W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford,
1946), p. 213. It is worth noticing that the charter by which Edward the Confessor
grants land to St Ouen (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters . . . , no. 1015) although
described by Dr D. Mathew as unimpeachable, The Norman Monasteries and their English
Possessions (Oxford, 1962), pp. 143, 24, had in fact been impeached by Levison, England
continued
Another aspect of the ecclesiastical relationship between England and
Normandy has recently been drawn attention to in studies by Mr
Lapidge and Professor Musset. In publishing three Latin poems, which
he showed to be from Aethelwold's school at Winchester, Mr Lapidge
has drawn attention to the strong similarities between one of them in
particular, the Altercatio, and satiric poems written by Gamier of
Rouen, who was in the circle of Ethelred's brother-in-law, Robert,
Archbishop of Rouen.55 He concluded that although the resemblances
are too close to be coincidental it is impossible to conjecture what the
relationship was. Musset has recently shown that the resemblances are
even greater than Lapidge had observed and is the more strongly
inclined to believe in a direct relationship.56 He has drawn attention to
further evidence for relations between England and certainly Gaul,
probably Normandy, in this period in the account of the miracles of St
Swithin by Lantfrith (who was certainly in the circle in which the
Anglo-Latin poems in question were written and may have written one
of them himself). Lantfrith says that the fame of St Swithin extends
beyond the sea and gives three examples: one is of a robber, in prison
and in chains in Gaul, awaiting execution who heard from some
merchants that there was a saint called Swithin noviter inventus in
transmarinis partibus, invoked him, and got out. The second is of a
woman who was ill and who took what proved to be the reliable advice
of an English priest who was passing through, to invoke St Swithin.
The third is of a woman beset by demons, who went from Gaul to
Swithin's shrine in England and was cured there.57 A particularly
interesting reference to the English relationship to a Norman church
comes in an account of the life of William of Volpiano in the chronicle
of St Benigne at Dijon. In describing William's reform at Fecamp it says
that among his community there was an Englishman, of noble, indeed
royal, stock, called Clement who was so frequently visited by men
from his country that he removed himself to Dijon in order to serve
God in peace.58 This cannot be dated more closely than to 1001-1030
and it could be that the Englishmen who pestered him were exiles
continued
and the Continent. . . , p. 212 n. 2, who detected elements in it more characteristic of the
tenth century and in particular of the reign of Edgar.
55
M. Lapidge, 'Three Latin Poems from Êthelwold's School at Winchester', Anglo-
Saxon England, i (1972), pp. 85-137, esp. pp. 101-2.
56
L. Musset, 'Rouen et 1'Angleterre vers 1'an mille', Annales de Normandie, xxiv
(1974), pp. 287-90.
57
Sancti Swithuni . . . Translatio et Miracula, ed. E. P. Sauvage, Analecta Bollandiana,
iv (1885), pp. 399-402. (One of the ways in which wandering Englishmen would have
turned up as exiles overseas was as penitential exiles; the existence of pro forma letters for
such suggests that they could have been numerous, Barlow, The English Church 1000-
1066, pp. 271-2.)
58
Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, cxli, col. 864. (Another reference which I owe to
Professor Barlow.)
rather than passing visitors. Fecamp was, of course, the great ducal
monastery at this period. It was there, for example, that Robert the
Pious spent Ascensiontide with Richard II in 1006; and it was to Fecamp
that Cnut gave land in England, explicitly fulfilling a promise made by
Ethelred.5^
The ecclesiastical connections of which we know most are those with
Flanders. The role of the great Flemish monasteries is too well-known
to dwell on here.60 Similarly the importance of Flemish and Picard cults
in England has been rightly emphasised by Professor Barlow.61 Further
important aspects of the relationships are brought out in
correspondence printed by Stubbs which in particular brings out the
importance to Flemish monasteries of English patronage.6 Consider
the letters from Flemish abbots to archbishops of Canterbury. The first
is from Wido, abbot of Blandinium, to Dunstan and was written
between 981 and 986.63 Wido says he would not have written so soon
after sending a messenger to England but he is forced to do so because
the crops have failed and he relies on Dunstan's benevolence. The next is
from Fulrad, abbot of St Vaast, to Dunstan's successor yEthelgar. He
congratulates him upon being made archbishop and says he hopes to
find another Dunstan in him. What this means is soon spelled out; he
wants a present. Then comes a letter from Odbert, abbot of St Bertin,
also to Êthelgar.65 He thanks him for his promises and points out that
the benefactions he has already given will soon be exhausted. More are
required. (Notice how quick off the mark these prelates are: ^thelgar
was archbishop for only eighteen months, but St Bertin had already got
through one benefaction and was after more.) On Sigerics's following
yEthelgar as archbishop Odbert wrote straight away.66 Dunstan, says
he, had been a great friend, yEthelgar a greater yet; the implication of
what it was up to Sigeric to be is unmistakable. He expresses the hope
that Sigeric will stay at St Berlin's on his way to Rome for the pallium.
We do not know whether he did or not; but he certainly did not stay
there on his way home. It may be that, as Stubbs suggests, he thought
Flemish hospitality might prove too expensive a luxury. 67 The most
striking thing about these letters is that they suggest not just gift-
59
C. Pfister, Etudes sur le regne de Robert le Pieux, p. 212; Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon
Charters, nos. 940, 982, cf. Mathew, Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions, p.
19.
60
For English relations with Flanders in general, Grierson, 'The Relations between
England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest', as at n.35 above, is of great
importance.
61
F. Barlow, The English Church, 1000-1066, pp. 19-20.
62
These are from the collections in British Library Mss Vespasian A XIV (written
for Wulfstan II of York) and Tiberius A XV.
63
64 65 66
Ibid., pp. 383-4. Ibid., pp. 384-5. Ibid., pp. 388-9.
67
Ibid., pp. 391-5, 389, n. 2.
giving, but continued dependence on the gifts, which the abbots expect
to keep coming. It could be an important thing about Dunstan and his
immediate successors, even perhaps an important thing about English
policy, that major Flemish abbeys seems to much in their patronage.
A notable feature of these letters and other associated correspondence
is the literary art displayed. They are in fancy Latin and four or five of
those to Dunstan are in whole or in part versified. These seem to be
circles in which the hopeful cleric sings for his supper with as much
elaboration and polish as he can muster. The Anglo-Latin documents of
the period and in particular some of the verse show a rather different
side of the late tenth century English church than do its vernacular
productions: they bring out more of the courtly and less of the pastoral.
Considerable store was set by literary accomplishment. The Ramsey
history says that Oswald's nephew, also called Oswald, who was later
abbot, received his early education at Ramsey but was then sent to
Fleury to study letters. It then, for once becomes a contemporary
source, and says that they still had 'in archivis nostris liber eius
versificus, multiformis peritiae ipsius et perspicacis ingenii testis'.68 The
importance of the Continent as a source for Latin learning in this period
is apparent when one considers how many Latin works at this time and
in the generations immediately following were produced for English
use by foreigners: for example, the B life of Dunstan, written probably
by a Continental Saxon and then sent to Abbo of Fleury to be
improved; the Vita Sancti Edmundi also by Abbo, who was a very
talented performer indeed, witness the astonishing triple acrostic verse
to Dunstan. (Characteristically he produced another like it for Otto
III).69 The miracles of St Swithin were written up by a foreign clerk, the
Encomium Emmae Reginae by yet another. Then in the next generation
there were Goscelin, Folcard and the author of the Vita Edwardi.
Our sources are so sparse that they give no more than glimpses even
of ecclesiastical relationships with foreign lands. What they do tell us is
often chiefly valuable as an indication of how little we know. A good
example is a letter in one of the collections printed by Stubbs from an
unknown English ecclesiastic to Arnoul Count of Flanders.70 This
prelate had had an evangeliary stolen from his monastery by two clerks,
who had sold it to the count for three mancuses. They had by a miracle
owned up and so the letter is sent asking for the return of the book. The
circumstances of their trip to Flanders are explained. They had been
sent to search for a certain girl captam a Danis vestris. An interesting
thing here is the reference to Arnulfs Danes. Vestris makes it sound as if
they were in his service, not just Danes who happened to be about the
68
Chronicon . . , Ramseiensis, ed. Macray, pp. 159-60.
69
70
Ibid., pp. 361-2.
place. They are not otherwise, I believe, heard of, and their presence
could have been an important element in Anglo-Flemish relations. A
kind of counterpart in the reference in Ottar the Black's poem on Cnut
to Frisians fighting for Edmund Ironside against Cnut at Sherston in
1016.71
The letter to Arnoul to which reference has just been made draws
attention to two important articles of commerce: holy objects and
slaves. The scope of this paper does not afford an opportunity even to
sketch the evidence, fairly copious as to range, very sparse as to scale,
for English commerce in this period. Still, it is important to emphasise
the likelihood that commercial activities formed in various ways, not all
obvious, an integral part of the web of relationships which linked the
various parts of northern Europe. Many episodes and incidents seem to
have a commercial dimension of some kind. For example Îfeah was
martyred at Greenwich in 1012. The Danish fleet was there again in
1013, 1014 and 1016.72 The name, Greenwich, is suggestive, the wic
element being in the palatalized form which Ekwall regards as the most
likely one to be associated with the meaning 'trading-place'.73 The
nature of the places where the Danish fleet is mentioned as lying
suggests that it moored in harbours rather than lay on beaches and this
would be specially understandable if the ships were as ornate as the
Encomiast of Emma says/ 4 In the Chronicle's account of Êlfeah's
martyrdom it is said that the Danes got drunk because 'wine from the
south had been brought there'.75 All this suggests that Greenwich may
well have been an important trading place. It is therefore of some
interest that it was among the places given to St Peter's Ghent by Edgar
in 964. When Cnut made a grant of English property to Fecamp and the
Confessor one to Mont Saint-Michel each included a portus (in the sense
of portus maris}.77 One may then reasonably wonder whether these
monasteries may not have been particularly concerned to own maritime
trading-places and reflect what a coup it must have been for Christ
Church Canterbury when Cnut gave it Sandwich itself.
Consideration of the murder of the archbishop leads to another chain
of Continental connection some of the links in which are probably
commercial. One of the best accounts of the atrocity is provided by
Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, in his chronicle.78 He had, he says,
71
Trans. D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 (1955), p. 308. I am
obliged to Mr M. K. Lawson for this reference.
72
Plummer and Earle, op. cit., i, pp. 144, 145, 149.
73
E. Ekwall, The Old English Wic in Place Names (Uppsala, 1964).
74
Encomium . . . , I, 4 and II, 4, cf. pp. 94-96.
75
Plummer and Earle, op. cit., i, p. 142. It is not stated how the wine had got there.
76
Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters . . . , no. 728.
77
See Sawyer and Mathew as at n. 59 above.
78
Thietmari Mersebergensis Episcopi Chronicon, ed. J. M. Lappenbergh and F. Kurze
(Hanover, 1889), pp. 214-5, 218-9.
gained his knowledge of this and of other near-contemporary events in
England from an Englishman called Sewald. Thietmar was the
grandson of Henry, count of Stade (on the left bank of the Elbe).
Another Henry, Thietmar's uncle, succeeded as count. Some of his
coins survive and are imitated from those of Ethelred.79 Another scrap
of information links Stade with England. The Annales Stadenses under
the year 1112 relate the shipwreck there some two generations earlier of
people who were navigantes de Anglia.80 Even in the worlds of learning
and monasticism commerce played its part. A satirical poem,
mentioned earlier, by Gamier of Rouen raises curious possibilities in
this regard.81 He denounces an Irish scholar called Moriuht, and offers
an account of his early life. Moriuht had, it is alleged, been captured by
the Danes and sold as a slave, sold to a nunnery at a place which may be
Corbridge; and there he seduced several nuns. He made off overseas,
was taken by the Danes again and sold at an unknown Saxon market,
being bought by a widow, who bought him with false money. He
seduced her and others. He had finished in Normandy where he set up
as a scholar. Clearly, this is satirical travesty; but it has the air of being
travesty of the kind of thing which actually happened and the poem
ranks as the earliest evidence for the slave-trade in Normandy. No one
can tell what is fact and what is farce in such a work. Still, it is an
engaging thought that the Scandinavian slave-trade could have worked
in such a way as to bring an Irish scholar to the court of Richard II of
Normandy. A more certain and more commonplace reminder of the
connection between commerce and learning comes from Helgaud.82 He
has very kind words to say about Gauzelin who followed Abbo as
abbot of Fleury in 1004. Gauzelin, he says, was very charitable, so
much so that one very cold winter, he positively took off his furs and
gave them to the poor. This edifying episode not only tells us of the
luxury of a great Benedictine house but also, granted that the main
sources of furs lay in the far north and east, indicates another possible
commercial thread.
These are scraps; indeed a very large part of what evidence there is
for the relation between England and North West Europe is scraps.
Nearly always much can be made of them, or little. But when the
diversity and in some degree the scale of the range of relationships
79
Ibid., pp. vii-viii, A. Suhle, Deutsche Munz - und Geldgeschichte . . . (Berlin, 1964,
p. 61). (In the light of Professor Dolley's remarks (Ethelred the Unready, as at n. 17 above,
pp. 125-6) I should say that I do not know whether these imitations are direct or indirect.)
Cf. Drogereit, 'Sachsen und Angelsachsen', p. 55, also for the possible implication of
English connection in the dedication of a church at Stade to St Pancras.
80
Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptores, xvi, ed. G. Pertz (Hanover, 1868), pp. 320-21.
81
See notes 55 and 56 above and L. Musset, 'Le satiriste Gamier de Rouen et son
milieu', Rev du Moyen Age Latin, x (1954), pp. 237-58.
82
Helgaud, op. tit., p. 120.
which these limited sources indicate are considered it seems likely that
England resembled and was linked with its neighbours to a larger
extent and in more important ways than can categorically be proved.83
83
Addendum. Professssor Barlow (F. Barlow et al., Leofric of Exeter (Exeter, 1972) p.
14 n. 2) draws attention to a litany of the eleventh century which includes an Ethelred
among the martyrs, and hints that this might be Ethelred II. However, as Mr M. K.
Lawson has pointed out to me, the conjunction of this name with Ethelbert makes it
almost certain that a much earlier Kentish prince is intended, cf. e.g. Symeonis
Dunelmensis opera . . ., i (Surtees Soc. 1868) ed. H. Hinde, pp. 2-8.
Knowledge of many aspects of Ethelred's reign has been increased by Simon Keynes,
The Diplomas of King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016 (Cambridge, 1980). For relations
with Germany see K. [}.] Leyser, 'Die Ottonen und Wessex', Fruhmittelalterliche Studien,
xvii (1983), pp. 73-97. Dr Rollason's study of the tract mentioned in n. 19 above has been
published: D. W. Rollason, 'Lists of Saints' Resting-Places in Anglo-Saxon England',
Anglo-Saxon England, vii (1978), pp. 61-94. For the role of dowagers see now P. Stafford,
Queens, Concubines and Dowagers in the Early Middle Ages (1983), pp. 143-74. I should
have referred, in relation to royal saints, to Janet Nelson, 'Royal Saints and Early
Medieval Kingship', Studies in Church History, x (1973), pp. 39-44, for both its obser-
vations and its references. There is a new edition of Adalberon's work (p. 194 above):
C. Carozzi, ed., Adalberon de Laon. Poeme au Roi Robert, (Paris, 1979).
5. A fourteenth-century plan of the high altar and east end of the abbey
church of St. Augustine, Canterbury. At the far east stood the altar-tomb of
Augustine, flanked by those of his immediate successors as archbishop,
Laurentius, Mellitus, Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit and Theodore. Other
Anglo-Saxon archbishops were buried further west. On the high altar lay 'the
books sent by Gregory to Augustine'. The bodies of the early archbishops
were moved to these positions in the new Norman church on its completion
in the early twelfth century. See p. 210 below. (Cambridge, Trinity Hall, MS.
IJ. 11a)
13
Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past*
The greatest advances in the study and understanding of Anglo-Saxon

history made before the nineteenth century were those of the twelfth.
They were in large measure accomplished by historians working during
the reigns of Henry I and Stephen: William of Malmesbury, Henry of
Huntingdon and the author traditionally called Florence of Worcester,
but whose name was probably John. William and 'Florence' were monks
and their work forms part of that flowering of Benedictine
historiography which matches the flowering of Benedictine architecture
in the generations after the Conquest. The motives of such men in
writing of the Anglo-Saxon past have been discussed, with perceptive
eloquence, by Sir Richard Southern. He speaks of the 'outrage,
resentment and nostalgia' of 'men who had known pre-Conquest
England'. We are listening, he says, to 'the voice of a whole generation of
literate men who had English ancestors', of monks who found claims
and cults, hitherto taken for granted, now threatened and scorned and
who thus were driven to the task of'bringing fragmentary and dispersed
material together and extracting from it a story which would impress
hostile or indifferent contemporaries'. The historical movement, he
maintains, 'drew its inspiration and gained its momentum from the
necessities of corporate survival', for what had been brought into
question was 'the survival of an ancient monastic culture, a religious and
intellectual tradition, and a position in the world'.1
There is much that is powerfully suggestive in this view. The
consequences of the Conquest were indeed such that threats were posed
to the monastic legacy from the Anglo-Saxon past. When Wulfstan II of
Worcester, the last survivor of Edward the Confessor's bishops, caused
his monk Hemming to put together a cartulary in about 1095 explicitly
among his motives was a wish to counter 'the violence of the Normans
. . . who have unjustly deprived this holy church' (though it was not
of the Normans alone that he thought ill).2 The ways in which men
whom William had put in power in the English church questioned its
* This chapter was originally delivered as a Denis Bethell Memorial Lecture.

1 R. W. Southern, 'Aspects of the European tradition of historical writing: 4, the
sense of the past', Trans Roy His Soc ser 5 23 (1973) 243-63: 246-9.
2
ibid., 249-50.
209
traditions must have been alarming indeed: for example, Lanfranc
conceived doubts about the sanctity of his predecessors Aelfeah and
Dunstan; abbot Walter of Evesham submitted venerable relics of his
house to verification by fire; abbot Warin expelled from the church at
Malmesbury some of the relics of its saints.3
But too much can be made of such episodes. If Lanfranc had his doubts
about Aelfeah, in time he came round. True, Professor Brooke has
brilliantly suggested how, in his rebuilding of Christ Church
Canterbury, the archbishop expressed in architectural form a new, more
universal, and less provincially rooted view of the church. 'In the short
space of seven years he built a new cathedral to present a new image of the
church in which none of the local shrines was visible to obscure the vista
of the altar of Christ and the throne of the archbishop'.4 But then Christ
Church by no means forgot its saints and did not have the best hand of
saints to play. The trump cards were a few hundred yards away, at St
Augustine's; and there the Norman rebuilding was such as to turn the
abbey church into a vast shrine to Gregory, Augustine and the early
kings and archbishops of Kent. Abbot Scotland and his Norman
successors at St Augustine's did not make less of Saxon saints and the
Saxon past than their native predecessors had done. They made more of
them, almost theatrically so. Abbot Walter of Evesham had indeed had
qualms about the, to him unknown, saints of his monastery. But Walter
was to find he needed such saints. He was, says the Evesham chronicler,
given to new things; although the old abbey church was one of the most
beautiful in England, little by little he knocked it down and built anew.
Funds, however, ran out and the building work came to a standstill.
What should the abbot do but send out a pair of monks to raise money on
the stump, equipped with the shrine and relics of St Egwin, previously
doubted. In the last resort no abbot, be he never so Norman, could in
prudence scorn the saints and holy history of his own monastery.
If defensive nostalgia for the Anglo-Saxon past played a part in the
inspiration of the Anglo-Norman historians there are, nevertheless,
other motives, by no means less important, to be reckoned with. For
monastic historians the threats they had to meet came not only from
Norman intruders, but also, and perhaps to a greater extent, from
3
David Knowles, The monastic order in England (2nd ed., Cambridge 1966) 119;
Margaret Gibson, Lanfranc of Bee (Oxford 1978) 171-2.
4
C. N. L. Brooke, 'Historical writing in England between 850 and 1150', Settimane
di Studio del Centra Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 1711 (1970) 223-47: 238.
5
For references to the literature see H. M. Taylor and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon
architecture (3 vols., Cambridge 1965-78), i 142-3.
6
W. D. Macray (ed), Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, Rolls Series 29 (1863) 55. For the
source see Antonia Gransden, Historical writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London 1974)
111-13.
Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past 211
bishops and their agents, from canons, secular clergy and new orders.7
The interest of monks in the Anglo-Saxon past was by no means
exclusively defensive or negative. It had its positive side; to be seen
almost immediately after the Conquest in the ways and the extent to
which the re-establishment of monasteries in the North sought to
recreate what had been there in the distant past.8 Furthermore the
interests of such a monk-historian as William of Malmesbury extended
far beyond subjects which were in some way related to monasteries and
to monasticism. Such writings on Anglo-Saxon history as his must be
considered as part of a wider movement which included important
works by men who were not monks. Pre-eminent among these secular
authors was Henry of Huntingdon who devoted two thirds of his
Historia Anglorum to the period before 1066. Henry's work (he was
writing at the end of Henry I's reign and during Stephen's) is a powerful
corrective to any view which puts too exclusive an emphasis on yearning
for a lost part as a motive for writing about the Anglo-Saxons. Henry
could have been partly English (though there is no direct evidence for
this) but the patron for whom he wrote was Alexander bishop of
Lincoln, and among the emotions which affected that prelate's hard head
and not always soft heart, it is unlikely that nostalgia for the Anglo-
Saxons worked strongly. Gaimar's L'Estoire des Engleis gives further
cause for thought. Gaimar was a secular clerk. His work is the first
history ever to have been written in French. For the most part it is an
indefatigable rendering into French verse of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It
was written, shortly before 1140, for Constance Fitzgilbert, the wife of
an Anglo-Norman land-owner in Lincolnshire.9 Clearly, by early in
Stephen's reign interest in Anglo-Saxon history extended beyond
monasteries, beyond the church and beyond the wish to preserve the
memory of a lost world.
Dr Thomson is surely right in emphasising that the flowering of
historiography in early twelfth century England must be seen as part of
wider intellectual movements, and as involving many strands of the
intellectual history of the twelfth century. One of these is the classicizing
tendency described by Sir Richard Southern in another admirable paper:
the urge to write histories in a style resembling that of Sallust, works of
art, sources of pleasure, stirring and entertaining in their use of fine
language.10 William of Malmesbury says he sought to savour his work
7
Martin Brett, 'J°rm of Worcester and his contemporaries', R. H. C. Davis and J.
M. Wallace-Hadrill (ed), The writing of history in the middle ages: essays presented to Richard
William Southern (Oxford 1981) 101-26: 125-26.
8
Knowles, Monastic order, chapter 9.
9
A. Bell (ed), Anglo-Norman Text Society 14-16 (1966); M. D. Legge, Anglo-
Norman literature and its background (Oxford 1963) 27-36.
10
R. W. Southern, 'Aspects of the European tradition of historical writing: 1, The
classical tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth', Trans Roy Hist Soc ser 5 20
(1970) 173-96.
11
'with Roman salt'. Henry of Huntingdon begins his with a quotation
from Horace.12 These were fit contemporaries for Henry of Blois,
bishop of Winchester, with his collection of Roman statues, 'the Cicero
of our day' as a contemporary was kind enough to call him.13
These historians did not, however, seek principally to entertain.
They sought to inform, and not least by clarity in exposition. The
creation of an ordered framework is of the essence of their work and
among the weightiest of their contributions. Consider, for example,
Henry of Huntingdon's intelligent and original re-arrangement of early
Anglo-Saxon history. Most medieval writers were, and not a few
modern writers have been, content to construct a narrative by
interweaving Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Many problems of
exposition arise in this; for the number of the early kingdoms and the
complications of their conversions make the sequence and pattern of
events hard to follow. Anyone who reads Bede from Book HI onwards,
anyone who tries to lecture on early Anglo-Saxon history, finds
difficulties here.
Huntingdon faces them head on. What he does is this. In Book II of
Historia Anglorum he describes the beginning of each of the Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms. At the end of the book he sums up, telling the reader
that he has taken the history of kings and kingdoms up to the time of
the Conversion. In the next book he will, he says, explain which
preachers, by the objurgation of whom, by what miracles and teaching,
converted which kings, in what order, to the faith of our Lord. He is a
very orderly writer and one who takes methodical pains to let the
reader know exactly where he is. Thus, before he closes Book II he says
that he does not think it will be taediosus to the reader, but rather, on the
contrary, apertior et gratior, if he briefly recapitulates the names of all the
kings of England, which up to this point in his book have been confuse
dispersa.14 He duly does it, providing a list of kings for each kingdom.
Then, on to Book III. Huntingdon begins, as usual, by making sure
that the reader knows where he is going. I am about, he says, to deal
with the conversion of England. He then lists seven crucial royal
conversions; and thereafter sets off to deal with each in detail. He uses
extensive extracts from Bede; but Bede has been rearranged.
Huntingdon has taken all the pieces of the Ecclesiastical History which
deal with conversions and has arranged them under kingdoms. Each
new section begins with a clear indication that it is a new section, e.g.
'Secunda pars incipit qua aperitur quomodo rex et populus Estsexe . . .'
and so on. Book III is entirely devoted to conversions; ecclesiastical
11
William Stubbs (ed), Gesta Regum, Rolls Series 90 (2 vols, 1887-9) i 2.
12
Thomas Arnold (ed), Historia Anglorum, Rolls Series 74 (1883) 1.
13
Lena Voss, Heinrich von Blois, Bischof von Winchester 1129-7i (Berlin 1932) 135.
14
Arnold, 63-4.
history has been completely separated from secular. At the end of the
book Huntingdon reminds his reader that this is what has been done
but that in the next book he will return to the contextum of the kings of
England. So indeed he does: end of Book II, death of Centwine;
beginning of Book IV, reign of his successor Caedwalla.15
I have dwelt on an example of Henry of Huntingdon's methods ot
exposition because it is so significant that he faces historians' problems
as well as historical problems. His book is in part a work of
imagination, especially in its battle pieces; at what may be a deeper level
it is one with a serious and an almost despairing moral purpose. No
less significant is the extent to which it reads as a text-book or a set of
careful lectures. Its author is often anxious to sort out, reorder, clarify,
to make sure that the reader knows where he has got to and where he is
going. It is characteristic of Huntingdon that it was he who introduced
the idea of the Heptarchy which so many generations have found so
useful, if in part so misleading, in seeking a thread to follow through
the early English centuries.17
If Henry of Huntingdon's Historia is in large measure a work of
exposition, the historian working at Worcester (whom I shall call, for
convenience, 'Florence') wrote something much more like a work of
reference. He produced, as part of a world chronicle, an annalistic
history of England, drawing not only on Bede and the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle but on much more beside. Modern scholars often chiefly
value his work for its use of sources which no longer survive and for
them the great desideratum is its dissection to reveal what these were.
But the most significant thing about his book is not so much his use of
sources now lost, as the width of the range of sources upon which he
drew. It is important that he was capable of overtly contrasting his
sources when they differed. Thus under 672 he points out that the
English chronicle gives an account of what happened in Wessex after
the death of Cenwalh which differs markedly from that of Bede.
Similar concern is to be found on occasion in William of Malmesbury's
works.19 For example, he notes that the Chronicle and Bede give
different lengths for the reign of Ethelbert of Kent. In such matters
15
Arnold, 77, 63, 103, 105. The division between Book III and Book IV appears
misplaced in Arnold's edition, 103.
1
N. F. Partner, Serious entertainments: the writing of history in twelfth-century England
(Chicago 1977) 11-50 provides the best account of Henry of Huntingdon and draws
attention to the orderliness mentioned above; I am much indebted to her.
17
Arnold, 64-66. The Heptarchy according to the Oxford English dictionary s.v. first
appears eo nomine in print in the work of Lambarde, 1576, twenty years before Savile
first printed Huntingdon, whose work must, however, have been known in
manuscript; cf. Arnold's introduction, xxxvi-xliii.
18
Benjamin Thorpe (ed), Chronicon ex chronicis (2 vols, London 1848-9) 30.
19
Rodney M. Thomson, 'William of Malmesbury as historian and man of letters', J.
Ecclesiast Hist 29 (1978) 387-413: 393.
these historians are intellectually in advance of their predecessors. Bede,
for example, never, in his historical works, contrasts two sources; but,
when he had conflicting evidence, as not infrequently he must have
had, worked either by silent conflation, or by silent discarding.
One of the most valuable and original features of'Florence's' work is
the extensive collection of reference materials which he provides.20
First, he has lists ofnomina episcopomm for all the English sees. These are
not simply cobbled together; his accounts of, in particular, the East
Anglian and the Mercian sees embody research. There follows his most
striking effort: Regalis prosapia Anglorum. In this he sets out the
genealogies of all the English royal families. A notable feature is the
extent to which he had, partly by drawing on hagiographic materials,
been able to include the wives of a number of kings. He sets out his
materials in the diagrammatic form of family trees rather as we are
familiar with them. He next provides outlines of the history of the five
principal kingdoms, lists the shires and bishoprics which in his own day
occupied the lands of each of those kingdoms, and provides a summary
account of the shires in each diocese. His is indeed a work of reference.
His table and trees are not just materials for the Handbook of British
Chronology; they are its true ancestor.
William of Malmesbury was perhaps the greatest, and is certainly the
most admired, of the Anglo-Norman historians. His account of early
Anglo-Saxon history is not in all respects so thorough as those of
Huntingdon and 'Florence' but presents some of the same features: a
wrestling effort to order chaotic circumstances, care to establish what
and where the early kingdoms were. William's History of Glastonbury is
perhaps the most remarkable piece of historical research of its day.21
Particularly interesting is chapter 71, Nomina abbatum Glastonie, for here
he sought to tabulate the names, years of ordination and lengths of
abbacy for all the abbots since the foundation of the abbey. Here as with
'Florence's' lists and tables we are provided with the means of looking
things up. Here is the ancestor of Knowles, Brooke and London, The
Heads of Religious Houses.
Not the least of William of Malmesbury's triumphs was his Gesta
pontificum. This account of the histories of all the dioceses of England
stands out as a methodical account of the ecclesiastical history of a
whole country, of a kind previously attempted for no other. It is also,
up to a point, a topographical survey. Most of our earliest descriptions
of English cities come from William, and very interesting they are too.
20
This material is printed in the edition of 'Florence's' work by Henry Petrie,
Monumenta historica Britannica i (London 1848) 627-34, but in 'Florence's' autograph
manuscript (Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 157) his tables and trees appear not at
the end of his work, as Petrie prints them, but at the beginning (pp 37-54); and are very
beautifully drawn up and decorated.
21
John Scott (ed), The early history of Glastonbury (Woodbridge 1981).
To take but one example, his account of Carlisle, in particular of the
Roman ruins there, including a hall still standing in defiance of the
weather and the demolition gangs; this is the only description from this
period of Roman buildings still standing in England and nearly the only
one which gives an idea of the crucial date lacking for most of the cities
of Roman Britain: the date of demolition.2 Such topographical
arrangement and topographical interests appear elsewhere in this
period. The (largely unprinted) hagiographical section of Henry of
Huntingdon's Historia, De miraculis, is in part topographically
arranged.23 It is thought that there may once have existed a work by
Conrad, archdeacon of Salisbury, Descriptio utriusque Britaniae, which
sounds as if it could have been a precursor, for other areas, of Gerald of
Wales's works on Wales and on Ireland.24
Taken together the works of the Anglo-Norman historians are hard to
parallel in other lands. Of course there is no difficulty in finding
examples abroad of a classicizing style: one does not have to read much
further into Thietmar of Merseburg than into Henry of Huntingdon to
find a quotation from Horace.25 Topographical interest; yes, one can find
that, for example (earlier) in Flodoard's account of the Roman antiquities
of Rheims.26 Extensive annalistic compilations; yes indeed, take for
example Marianus to whom 'Florence' owed so much. But no other land
produced such a group of works thought out in such advanced ways -
one could almost say such modern ways. Nowhere else is there, for
example, such comprehensiveness in the topographical approach. It is
one thing to give a history of the bishops of one see, as Adam of Bremen
did, quite another to provide histories of all the sees in a kingdom, as
William of Malmesbury did. Why was English historiography so out-
standing? The answers must be sought in the needs of the day; the
problems facing those who sought to meet them; and the intellectual
equipment with which historians faced the problems.
The learned men of Anglo-Saxon England had left their country very
ill-provided with histories. No work of history of any weight was
written by an Englishman between the death of Bede and the Norman
Conquest, unless, and indeed at what a pinch, the Chronicle,
Aethelweard's work, or the Vitae of the tenth century saints are so
regarded. One can be tempted by the idea that there may have once
been substantial works which now are lost. It is spine-chilling to
consider the manuscripts of which, but for a series of happy chances,
the Cottonian fire of 1731 could have destroyed all knowledge: the only
22
N. E. S. A. Hamilton (ed), Degestispontificum Anglorum, Rolls Series 52 (1870) 208.
23
Gransden, Historical writing . . ., 197-8.
24
L. Fleuriot, Les origines de la Bretagne (Paris 1980) 233-4.
25
I. M. Lappenberg and F. Kurze (ed), Thietmari . . . chronicon (Hanover 1889) 2.
26
J. Heller and G. Waitz (ed), Flodoardi historia Rememsis ecdesiae, MGH SS 13 (1881)
412-3.
known manuscripts of Beowulf, of the Battle of Maldon and of
Aethelweard, the only manuscript of Asser known to have survived the
middle ages. How easily, one must reflect, could other works, equally
important, have been lost without trace, then, or earlier. It is certain
that some sources have been lost: for example, the East Anglian annals
drawn upon in the F text of the Chronicle and certain accounts of tenth-
century history used by William of Malmesbury and by 'Florence'.
Nevertheless, it is demonstrable that, for all the pains they took to
search for sources, the Anglo-Norman historians were to a very large
extent dependent on no works other than those which still survive. It is
virtually certain that for large areas of Anglo-Saxon history the inquirer
of c. 1100 had no source apart from Bede or the wretched annals of one
or more versions of the Chronicle.
The impression that English ecclesiastics were backward in writing
works of history is reinforced by Dr Fell's account of the English
hagiographical tradition.27 As she describes it, it was extraordinarily
meagre and extraordinarily conservative. There is no surviving Latin
life of an English saint composed between the earlier eighth century and
the late tenth, though later hagiographical works may contain limited
traces of compositions from this long period of apparent silence. The
martyrology in Old English which appears in the ninth century and
which was still being copied in the eleventh includes no Anglo-Saxon
saint other than those indicated as such by Bede or by some
hagiographical source which still survives. As authors, English clerics
were inert. Another indication of this is that so many of the Latin
biographical works relating to England and produced in the immediate
pre-Conquest generations were the work of foreigners: Abbo's life of
St Edmund, Encomium Emmae Reginae, the 'B' life of Dunstan, Vita
Edwardi Confessoris, the first lives by Goscelin.28
The lack of historical or hagiographical works is the more striking
when one considers how important early saints and early kings were to
the great monasteries. In late Anglo-Saxon England realignments of
saints went with realignments of power. The consolidation of the
power of Aethelflaed and of Ethelred in West Mercia in the early tenth
century is marked by the translation of Oswald's body from Bardney to
Gloucester and Werburg's from Hanbury to Chester.29 In the later
tenth and earlier eleventh century some great communities, especially
Glastonbury and Durham, were very active in collecting and/or
27
C. Fell, 'Edward king and martyr and the Anglo-Saxon hagiographical tradition',
D. Hill (ed), Ethelred the Unready: papers from the millenary conference, Br Archaeol Rep
Br Ser 59 (1978) 1-14.
28
Gransden, Historical writing . . .,42.
29
A. Thacker, 'Chester and Gloucester: early ecclesiastical organisation in two
Mercian burhs', Northern History 18 (1982) 199-211.
claiming saints, an activity which had much to do with the nature and
extent of other claims made by them and by their patrons.
Consider Glastonbury. This great house does not always get its due
from historians, who seem sometimes unable to rid themselves of a
feeling that it was something of a backwater. It was, however, the richest
monastery in late Anglo-Saxon England.3 It was the place of burial for
Edgar, the most imperial of the late Anglo-Saxon rulers. He was a
maritime king for whom a main area of action was the Irish Sea. His
subordinated kings rowed him on the Dee; according to 'Florence' he
circumnavigated Britain every year; it was later believed that he had
intervened in Ireland.31 The grandeur and the nature of the saints
assembled at his favoured monastery of Glastonbury, on its holy island
looking north to the Bristol Channel, matched his activities and
ambitions: Patrick, David, Gildas, Aidan.32
Glastonbury was also a place with some tradition of learning,
including at least gestures towards classical learning. (It is curious that, in
the most famous Glastonbury manuscript from the period of tenth
century reform, the longest passage in the hand which has been
suggested to be that of Dunstan is a page from the Ars amatoria of Ovid,
outlining the general principles of seduction.)33 Yet the power,
aspirations and learning of this very rich monastery were not reflected in
compositions of an historical or hagiographical kind, or indeed, of any
other kind, so far as we can tell. When William of Malmesbury came to
write the history of Glastonbury he found very little there to draw on
which had been composed at the abbey, charters apart.
Here, and generally, one major impulse behind the great Anglo-
Norman historiographical effort was that the Anglo-Saxons had left so
many gaps to fill. The very scale of the challenge may have helped to
determine the nature of the response. Anglo-Saxon history had elements
which made it specially intractable. For example, serious difficulties
arose from there having been so many kingdoms; to create an intelligible
narrative from chronologically parallel series of events was an awkward
matter. This partly accounts for the vigour and emphasis with which
Huntingdon and, to a limited but still marked degree, Malmesbury keep
advising the reader of the way in which problems of exposition are being
handled, in a plain indication of the self-consciousness of their struggles
to order confusion.
Yet greater difficulties were caused by the nature of the
30
Knowles, Monastic order, 702.
31
F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed., Oxford 1971) 369; Chronicon (ed.
Petrie) 576-8; E. John in J. Campbell, E. John and P. Wormald, The Anglo-Saxons
(Oxford 1982) 255.
32
Scott, The early history of Glastonbury, 54-71.
33
R. W. Hunt (ed), St Dunstan's dassbook from Glastonbury. Cod.Bibl. Bodl. Oxon.
Auct. F 4.32, Umbrae Codicum Occidentalium 4 (Amsterdam 1961) xx-xxiii and f 47.
hagiographical data. Straightforward Vitae of Anglo-Saxon saints were
few and far between. But there was a very large number of saints: some
of these had at least a little recorded about them in writing; more had
nothing but oral traditions to sustain their reputations. A good example
of the kind of problem posed is that of the traditions associated with the
so-called 'Kentish legend', recently, and well, explored by Dr
Rollason.34 Its core is the story of how Ecgbert (king of Kent, 664-73)
was involved in the murder of two of his young cousins; of how he
made restitution by granting their sister land to found the monastery at
Minster; and of how her daughter Mildrith became abbess of that
monastery, affording miraculous evidence of sanctity. The earliest
surviving version comes in a Ramsey source of c. 1000, which may
perhaps have drawn on eighth-century materials. It is one of a large
number of hagiographical legends, which might be called those of the
holy cousinhood. Many of them do not appear until the eleventh
century or later. They relate to a singular galaxy of saints, all placed in
the later part of the seventh century, all descended at various removes
from one or more of three kings (Ethelbert of Kent, Penda of Mercia
and Anna of East Anglia) and most of them women. Dr Rollason, in a
simplified tree, lists fourteen saints in this cousinhood: SS Mildrith,
Mildburg and Mildgith were sisters; St Werburg was their cousin, as
was St Osyth; St Eanswith was their great-aunt. Her sisters-in-law
were SS Aethelthryth, Wihtburg and Seaxburg. Seaxburg was the
mother of SS Eormenhild and Earcongota, of whom the first was the
mother of St Werburg; and so it could go on.
Many, perhaps all, of these saints were real people. There is no later
parallel to such a cluster of relations being regarded as saints. Their
legends, when we have them, often contain folkloric elements which
take us a long way from Bede. Nevertheless an Anglo-Saxon saint with
a documentary record of any kind was doing well, relatively speaking.
There were scores of them who were remembered, but not written
about. A typical case is that of the cult of St Rumonus at Tavistock.35
William of Malmesbury wrote of this that 'no written testimony
strengthens belief; and, he added, you will often find this in England.
The violence of enemies has swept everything away, leaving nothing
but nuda tantum sanctorum nomina and tales of modern miracles. Many of
these shadowy saints belonged to the age before the Viking invasions.
Their story is part of the more-than-half-lost history of English
monasticism between the age of Bede and the tenth century reform.
Their cults were not infrequently associated with the communities of
secular clerks which were common in late Anglo-Saxon England. Such
34
D. W. Rollason, The Mildrith legend: a study in early medieval hagiography in England
(Leicester 1982) 45.
35
Hamilton, Gesta pontificum, 202.
communities sometimes had a long past in which they seem to have
begun as double monasteries founded and ruled by great royal ladies.
Whatever their origins, or their original grandeur, these institutions
have often left no more than the faintest footsteps in the sands of time.
Sometimes they can be traced in Domesday; sometimes the remains of
one of their churches can be identified; sometimes they show up at the
point when, as not infrequently happened, an Anglo-Saxon holy place
became the site of a new house of Augustinian canons. The members of
such communities did not write books - at least, not that we know of,
though some or much Anglo-Saxon poetry could be theirs. They very
seldom received charters: Ethelred H's grant to St Frideswide's,
Oxford, is a most exceptional instance.36 It was such communities
which had done much to ensure that, if England was poor in Vitae, it
was rich in saints, and in stories of saints.
It was not easy in the post-Conquest generations for men who
demanded more than nuda sanctorum nomina to cope with such cults.
One obvious response was the composition, not to say fabrication, of
Vitae of individual saints. An impressive number of such were
produced by Goscelin and by others. More comprehensive historians
were well aware of the problems. 'Florence' made an effort to get
material from the 'Kentish legend' into his annals; and made use of
hagiographical materials in compiling his genealogical trees. One of the
most effective ways of dealing with such materials was topographical.
A start along such lines had been made before the Conquest with the
Old English tract 'The resting places of the English saints'.37 Possibly
compiled in two stages, one in the tenth century, the other in the
eleventh, it lists the shrines of fifty-one saints, some well-known,
others hardly known at all. In the twelfth century it continued to be
used, in a developed Latin form. Henry of Huntingdon's De miraculis
was a more extended account, partly on a topographical basis, of many
English saints. A wish to cope with the saints and miracles of England
was part (though not the main part) of the reason for William of
Malmesbury's topographical approach in Gesta pontificum.
The topographical approach is one aspect of the peculiarly
comprehensive treatment of England which the Anglo-Norman
historians adopted: describing and listing and numbering. England was
their patria and they were proud of it. William of Malmesbury says that
he writes 'propter patriae caritatem'.38 It was a patria which had
characteristics which marked it out from other kingdoms. Its political
unity and geographical distinctness were, if by no means complete,
36 For editions and accounts of which see P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon charters: an
annotated list and bibliography (London 1968) no. 909.
37
D. W. Rollason, 'Lists of saints' resting places in Anglo-Saxon England', Anglo-
Saxon England 7 (1978) 61-94.
38
Stubbs, Gesta regum, i 2.
then elsewhere unmatched. No subjects of Louis VII or Lothar II,
Henry I's contemporaries when William of Malmesbury was writing,
could, had they determined on similar enterprises to the Gesta
pontificum, have been by any means so certain what the limits of their
descriptions should be. Not only was England well defined, its
administrative arrangements were notably orderly, compared to those
of continental states. Its thirty-five shires could be neatly listed; it was
easy approximately to specify the boundaries of ancient kingdoms or of
modern dioceses by reeling off the shires involved. Such specifications
in Malmesbury or in Huntingdon are a kind of counterpart to the way
in which the shires determine the framework of the Pipe Rolls. The
historians' descriptions of England as a whole had something in
common with Domesday Book; they partly reflect the unity, the
regularity, the compassability of the England the Normans conquered.
The most striking quality of the Anglo-Norman historians is
intellectual grasp. Everywhere there is order and method, intellect
applied to the creation of books which are genuine works of reference
and research. Whence do these qualities come? Partly from the works of
the past. Much was owed to Bede, but Bede was in important ways not
more, but less, sophisticated than those who revered him in the twelfth
century. Something, above all in style, was owed to classical authors.
Something, notably the interest in the compilation of lists, may have
been owed even to Nennius, whom they believed to have been Gildas.
More particularly, the works of these historians, and especially those of
Malmesbury and of Huntingdon, deserve to be set beside others more
frequently mentioned as characteristic of the intellectual endeavours of
the twelfth century.39. Intrinsic to many of these endeavours was
bringing things together and sorting them out: this is what Gratian,
Abelard and Peter Lombard do, and in their way, it is what the
historians do. In England the book which most recalls the intellectual
qualities of Malmesbury and Huntingdon is, I would suggest, De
legibus Anglie, attributed to Glanvill, above all in its orderly exposition,
in the way in which it imposes patterns on an intricately related chaos.
There is even something to be learned from a comparison between the
Dialogus de scaccario and Huntingdon: the latter is sometimes nearly as
didactic in style as the former; and 'Are you with me?' is the question
which both repeatedly indicate.
An important set of questions, which I am not competent to answer,
is raised about the role of history in education and in the intellectual
attitudes of the day. A common view seems to be that it played little
part in the one and was not highly regarded in the other. But William of
39
Rodney Thomson, 'William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources', J. Mediev Hist
7 (1981) 321-27 points out the desirability of seeing Malmesbury in a European
context.
Malmesbury, describing his own education at the beginning of Book II
of Historia regum says that he studied logic a little, medicine quite a lot,
ethics well, historiam praecipue.40 Henry of Huntingdon did not allocate
history a low place in his intellectual and moral world. Knowledge of
the past, he says, marks the distinction between brutes and rational
creatures. Brutes, whether animals or men, neither know nor wish to
know whence they came, they do not know their own origins nor
'patriae suae casus et gesta'.
Well might Huntingdon and Malmesbury speak well of History;
they had served it well. Their work laid the foundations for all who
have followed them. But not the least interesting thing about the story
of the recovery of knowledge of the distant past of England is that it is
by no means one of continuous progress. In important ways the gains
made by the Anglo-Normans were permanent. Manuscripts of their
works continued to be used and copied. There are, for example,
twenty-five medieval manuscripts of Henry of Huntingdon's Historia.
In some monasteries the serious study of Anglo-Saxon history
continued. At St Augustine's Canterbury in the early fifteenth century
the work of Thomas Elmham on the history of his house reached
heights not to be exceeded for over two hundred years. His was the first
history written in England to be illustrated by a local map and by a plan
of a church, the first to provide facsimiles of charters, the first to
include a serious discussion of diplomatic, and the first to solve the
problem of the explication of concurrent chronological series by setting
the dates out in parallel columns.41 Indeed in general the great
monasteries kept their heads, and a pretty sane view of their own past,
while all around a flood of nonsense rose.
But a rising tide of nonsense there was. It had several elements. One
was, of course, the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth; for several centuries
from its publication c. 1136 Historia regum Britanniae poisoned most
educated Englishmen's view of their own past. His fictions were exposed
by Polydore Vergil, who, however, failed to kill them completely. The
latest example I have found of large parts of Geoffrey's farrago being
presented as cold truth is in a work hopefully entitled, A million of facts,
published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1833.
40
Stubbs, Gesta regum, i 103.
41
A. Gransden, Historical writing in England, c. 1307 to the early sixteenth century
(London 1982) 350-55; Michael Hunter, 'The facsimiles in Thomas Elmham's history
of St Augustine's Canterbury', The Library ser 5 28 (1973) 215-20. The layout of
'Florence's' episcopal lists in the first pages of his manuscript of his Chronicon is
extremely careful, rather like that of canon tables, and is plainly designed to permit
chronological correlation but is nothing like so precisely detailed as Elmhan's
Chronologia Augustiniensis (Charles Hardwick (ed), Historia Monasterii S. Augustini
Cantuarinensis, Rolls Series 8 (1858) 1-73.
42
T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (London 1950) especially chapters 1, 5 and 6.
It is possible to extend a large tolerance towards twelfth-century
fictionalizing history, and perhaps we should extend it. Monmouth's
work is undoubtedly of great brilliance. To the extent that it is presented
as truth it is a fraud; but Dr Flint's view that Geoffrey was really writing a
kind of satire - not least one on his historian contemporaries - which was
taken as truth has much to commend it.43 In any case Geoffrey's history
was very soon accepted; one effect of its acceptance was, to a degree, to
put much of Anglo-Saxon history in the shade. It was so much less
interesting than Geoffrey's account of an earlier period. The popularity
of other fictionalizing history which also appears in the twelfth century is
no less comprehensible. Some of these tales provided a more or less
Anglo-Saxon past for areas knowledge of whose real Anglo-Saxon past
was lost. For example, the story of Havelock the Dane provided an
interesting history, otherwise lacking, for Grimsby. It is hardly
surprising, though rather striking, that three characters from the story,
Havelock, Goldbury and, naturally, Grim, appear on the town's first seal
(temp. Edward I) duly labelled.44 The rise of this kind of history, or
rather, its first appearance in written form, is of course connected with
the development of epics and romances in French and, somewhat later,
in English. These in turn are connected with developments in
hagiography. Some hagiographers wrote for the same audiences and
used the same techniques as those of romance. History, fictionalized
history, romance and hagiography stood, by the late twelfth century, in
a complicated relationship to one another;4 and one which did little to
help that good cause, the discovery of the truth about the past.
Of the Anglo-Norman historians he whose attitude towards the
legends of the saints is most interesting is William of Malmesbury. He
retails some most extraordinary stories and his 'credulity' has been
emphasised. Its nature has been brilliantly discussed by Dr Thomson.46
He points out that a high proportion of Malmesbury's more astounding
miracle-stories are attributed to 'a decade or two previous to his writing';
and that he is at his most restrained and 'intellectual' when dealing with
the remote past. For example, in his account of the remote, allegedly
apostolic origins of Glastonbury he is 'restrained, rational and cautious,
with elaborate citation of his sources'. He is unlike many medieval
historians in that he 'introduces marvels when his source-material is
most abundant, and gratuitously, to the extent that they contribute little
or nothing to his main theme'. Dr Thomson suggests tentatively, but
43
Valerie I. J. Flint, 'The Historia Regum of Geoffrey of Monmouth: parody and its
purpose, a suggestion', Speculum 54 (1979) 447-68.
44 W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British
Museum (6 vols, London 1887-1900) ii no. 4958.
45
M. Dominica Legge, 'Anglo-Norman hagiography and the romances', P. M.
Clogan (ed), Medievalia et Humanistica n. s. 6 (1975) 41-50.
46
'William of Malmesbury as historian and man of letters', 398—401.
illuminatingly, that there was a degree of inner conflict in William in
these regards. On the one hand he had a truly and strongly critical sense.
On the other: 'When he came to his own time he could hardly dismiss
miracles, signs and wonders without provoking questions from others
and distress in his own psyche.' He illustrates this suggestion,
powerfully, by showing how, although Malmesbury's 'Miracles of the
Virgin' by its very nature makes plain his commitment to belief in
alleged episodes of a flabbergasting description, nevertheless he is both
judicious, and explicitly troubled, about the failure of ancient authorities
to say anything about the assumption or ascension of the Virgin. This
analysis does much to explain how it could be that a man so critical as
Malmesbury, so doubting on occasion ofopiniones volaticae as opposed to
good evidence,47 could appear on other occasions as so flagrantly
credulous. It has been suggested that Malmesbury 'attempted to harness
hagiography to history' and even 'took the romancer's freedom to
invent, including precise dates and proper names'. 48 some of his stories
help to explain such judgements. But his work as a whole by no means
suggests that he was a historian who wrote without regard for fact or
critical assessment of sources. Rather does it seem that, as Dr Thomson
suggests, there were certain contexts in which he chose not to judge, or
dared not judge, as in most other circumstances he did.
The debate about the extent and nature of William of Malmesbury's
'credulity' is of narrow significance only if one believes that an
understanding of history, in the sense of the attainment of a secure
understanding of how what can be known about the past, can be known,
came easily into the intellectual tradition in which we live. Another view
can be taken: that the discovery of the means of finding the true nature of
the past has been no less important, and no less difficult, than the
discovery of the means of understanding the physical world. For those
who think in this way Malmesbury, at his frequent best, stands for a real
intellectual advance. The extent to which, later in the twelfth century,
approaches other than his became prominent can seem disquieting. It is
crude, but not meaningless, to see his approach, which could be at times
almost that of a lawyer judging evidence, being rivalled or even
dominated by another, much more akin to that of the historical novelist.
Consider, for example, two twelfth-century hagiographical feats: the
development of the accounts of St Edmund and of St Osyth.
Not much is known of St Edmund apart from his having been killed
by the Danes in 870. His cult was early, but the clerks who guarded his
shrine, characteristically of such communities, left no writings about
him. In the 980s appears a Vita, by Abbo of Fleury. The story he had to
47
Scott, Early history of Glastonbury, 21.
48
Peter Carter, 'Miracles of the Virgin Mary', R. H. C. Davis andj. M. Wallace-
Hadrill (ed), The writing of history in the middle ages; essays presented to Richard William
Southern, 127-66: 163. '
tell is in various respects astounding; but he fairly clearly told it as he got
it. His account of the historical background is reasonable and moderate
even if it occasions difficulties. He has to make a little information go a
long way, but he does not fill the gaps with fiction, using verbiage rather.
A century later comes Archdeacon Hermann's account. It is not very
different from Abbo's; he has a few more details and some recent
miracles, but no pseudo-history. Hermann's spirit is not unlike that of
Malmesbury, who drew on him. Sixty years later (c. 1150) appears the
work of Geoffrey of Wells. Now there is no shortage of information on
the political background; rich and fascinating indeed are the
circumstances and the details with which Geoffrey regales us.49
Singularly interesting is his account of Edmund's origins.50 It begins
with Offa, king of the East Angles, and said to have reigned before
Edmund. He had no heir and went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his
way he passed through the dominions of the king of the (continental)
Saxons, a relative of his. At his court he met a most worthy young
man, Edmund indeed, whom he adopted as his son and made his heir.
(I abbreviate.) With a good deal of pseudo-history we do not know to
what extent its authors actually believed what they wrote or were
making sense according to their lights of odd and often oral sources
which they had no means of verifying. This particular story however
must be conscious fiction, concocted by Geoffrey of Wells or someone
not long before. We can be sure of this, because we can see its starting
point: a misunderstanding of Abbo's statement that Edmund was 'ex
antiquorum Saxonum nobili prosapia oriundus'. What Abbo almost
certainly meant was that Edmund came from an ancient Anglo-Saxon
family. But because in English usage Angli was used for the Anglo-
Saxons, (Antiqui) Saxones for the continental Saxons, he was taken to be
indicating an immediate continental origin and the appropriate tale was
made up. Made up; the role of plain (or fancy) fiction in hagiography was
extensive. To an extent it always had been. But there was something
fairly new about the extent and superficial plausibility of such fictitious
or semi-fictitious history as Geoffrey of Wells provides; and what was
new about it was much the same as what was new about Geoffrey of
Monmouth.
My second instance comes from the feats of the canons of Chich in
Essex in writing up the Vita of their foundress St Osyth.51 St Osyth
was one of the great late seventh-century cousinhood of saints. Her cult
appears to have survived at Chich, no one knows how. In 1121 an
Augustinian house was founded there; it was an important one; its first
49
Dorothy Whitelock, 'Fact and fiction in the legend of St Edmund', Proc Suffolk Inst
Archaeol 31 (1970) 217-33.
50
M. Winterbottom, ed., Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto, 1972), pp. 67-87.
51
Denis Bethell, 'The lives of St Osyth of Essex and St Osyth of Aylesbury', Analecta
Bollandiana 88 (1970) 75-127.
prior was within three years to become archbishop of Canterbury.
Little if anything was recorded in writing about Osyth, proper Vitae
and Legendae were plainly needed and the canons set to work with a
will. A number of Vitae were produced at Chich (and elsewhere). One
of the authors was William de Vere, brother of the earl of Oxford,
brother-in-law of Geoffrey de Mandeville and Roger Bigod. So great
an Anglo-Norman grandee could not neglect an obscure Anglo-Saxon
saint: not if she was St Osyth and he was a canon of Chich he couldn't.
He and others made a bad job of the life of St Osyth. The story as they
present it is this. Osyth was a grand-daughter of Penda, king of Mercia.
She was married off to Sighere, king of East Anglia (or, more
plausibly, of Essex). Having miraculously avoided his matrimonial
embraces she became abbess of Chich. The monastery was then
attacked by the Danes, who cut her head off. She showed considerable
fortitude in not dying at once, but carried her head into the church first.
The most striking feature of the story is the gross chronological
dislocation. First William de Vere and others put Osyth into the
seventh century, then they attribute her martyrdom to the Danes
Inguar and Ubba who belonged to the ninth.
It is this which is shocking. Some may boggle at the story of the
severed head; but that is the kind of hagiographical topos which was
accepted. But no one consciously believed in miracles of chronology; it
was not normal to accept the idea of two pasts: one human with real
dates and events; the other divine with saints and wonders floating
freely through the generations. The authors of these Vitae were writing
chronological nonsense; and what is more, avoidable nonsense. A
careful look at Bede would have enabled them to substitute a fairly
reliable approximate date for Osyth for the wild guesses some of them
actually provided.52 The work of the Anglo-Norman historians was
available by the time William de Vere wrote (after 1163) and would
have enabled him and others to make more chronological sense than
they did. They did not care: or anyway, they did not bother. The great
Anglo-Norman historians did care and did bother about just such
things. They had a sense of evidence.
Why trouble about such false stories and careless misadventures as
those of Geoffrey of Wells or the canons of Chich? One can find one
serious reason in considering a work written in another East Anglian
monastery in the same generation. Thomas of Monmouth's De vita et
passione Sancti Willelmi Martyris Norwicensis.53 This most interesting
work (rather surprisingly not in the bibliography of David Knowles's
The monastic order in England) describes the mysterious death in 1144 of a
52
For actual dates in the Vitae see, especially, Bethell, 'Lives of St Osyth', 87 n 2. C.
Plummer (ed), Venerabilis Baedae Opera historica (2 vols, Oxford 1896) i 199, 218, 322
permit the approximate dating of Sighere of Essex.
53
A. Jessopp and M. R.James (ed), The life of St William of Norwich (Cambridge 1896).
boy called William, and of how a majority of the monks of Norwich
convinced themselves and others that he had been ritually murdered by
the Jews. It is of sharp interest in the history of Europe because it marks
the point in which the deadly lie of Jewish ritual murder comes to the
surface: and does so in a big, well-endowed, not unsophisticated house
of Black Monks. One need not be an enemy of the Black Monks in
saying: 'They should have known better'. One would be less than a
friend if one did not say: 'One wishes they had known better'. It is
important that some of the monks of Norwich did indeed know better.
It is clear from Monmouth's book that there was opposition within the
monastery to the adoption of the cult. It seems that monks were among
those 'who allow that he was cruelly killed but who are uncertain by
whom, or why, he was made an end of, and do therefore not presume
to affirm that he was either a saint or a martyr'. 54 I would maintain that
there is a parallel between those decent doubters at Norwich and
William of Newburgh who would not swallow Geoffrey of
Monmouth; and a parallel between on the one hand the monk of Bury
who made up the story of Edmund's German origins and the canons of
Chich who so readily wrote avoidable nonsense and on the other those
at Norwich accepting the story of ritual murder. It may be contended,
and understandably contended, that it is anachronistically beside the
point to criticise the imaginative flights of medieval hagiography.
Understanding, rather than condemnation, may be called for. At least
in such an extreme case as that of the monks of Norwich and St William
the force of another approach can be felt, one well summed up in an
observation by the Due de Broglie which Lord Acton was fond of
quoting: 'We must beware of too much understanding lest we end by
too much forgiving'. More generally, one of the charges which the
Reformers levied against the medieval church was that it was
insufficiently concerned to distinguish truth from falsehood. Its open
vulnerability to this charge derived in part from the extent to which its
hagiography was fictitious. Too much had been composed in the spirit
of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Lies about saints were not new to the
twelfth century; but the literary development of the age enabled them
to be supplied on a larger scale and in a better style. Such a man as
William of Malmesbury often stood for the pursuit of truth, zealous
supporter of the cults of saints though he was. In such works as those of
Geoffrey of Wells that pursuit was set on one side in favour of warmly
interesting and richly circumstantial fiction.
The problems and possibilities raised by early twelfth-century
approaches to the Anglo-Saxon past are numerous, and many of them
have been no more than touched upon, if that, in the present paper. For
example, interest in Anglo-Saxon history extended beyond monastic or
54
Jessopp and James, 88.
native circles poses questions about the assimilation of 'Norman' and
'Anglo-Saxon'. The cult of Edward the Confessor needs consideration
here. A curious result of that cult, and of an Angevin king's regard for
an Anglo-Saxon saint, was king John's being buried at Worcester. It
was believed that after the Conquest Lanfranc had intended to depose
bishop Wulfstan II on the ground that he was illiteratus. (The story first
appears in Osbert of Clare). The threatened bishop had gone to the
tomb of Edward the Confessor and laid his staff upon it. It sank into the
tomb as though the tomb were made of wax and was held fast. The
king and confessor who had made Wulfstan bishop had provided a
miraculous demonstration which could be regarded as bearing on the
right of kings to appoint bishops.55
It has been suggested above that one of the most interesting things
about the work of early twelfth-century historians of England is its
relationship to intellectual endeavours in other fields and what it
indicates about the role of historiography in the history of learning and
of culture. Such a suggestion is by no means original and I would
emphasise how much what is written above owes to the work of
others, in particular of Dr Thomson and Dr Partner. The
'extraordinarily complex historical activity' which characterizes the
early twelfth century, the way in which 'earlier historians were
carefully studied, contemporaries were copied out and annotated
almost as soon as written', 6 what can fairly be called William of
Malmesbury's professional sense,37 tell part of an important story. At
least for some, and at least for a time, history was not a subordinated
study, at best the poor relation or the country cousin of theology or
law. In their endeavours to recover and to explain to others the past,
and not least the pre-Conquest past, these historians stood for
something very serious.
In our attempts to understand them, and their subjects, one of the
greatest difficulties which stands in the way is the complex
intractability of the hagiographical materials. A paradigm case is that of
those relating to St Osyth. It was Denis Bethell who, by acute
intelligence, and much hard work made sense of these. His so doing
was but one among his many services to historical learning, and not
even among the greatest of them. For, of lasting weight though his
published works are, yet more important is the help and inspiration
which he gave to other historians.
55
F. M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford 1928) 85-88.
56
Martin Brett, 'John of Worcester and his contemporaries', 125, 103.
57
R. R. Darlington, Anglo-Norman historians (London 1947) 9-10.
I should have indicated that the suggestion that such communities as those mentioned on
p. 219 may have produced verse derives from P. Wormald, 'Bede, Beowulf and the
Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy', in Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed.
continued
R. T. Farrell (Br Archaeol Rep Br Ser 46 (1978)), esp. pp. 53-54. Mr J. B. Gillingham, in
a kind communication, pointed out to me that, in emphasising the importance of Dr
Thomson's demonstration of the difference between William of Malmesbury's
treatment of the distant past and his treatment of the recent past (pp. 222-3 above), I
should have brought out how far this must complicate contention about the transferability
in the twelfth century between attitudes to the past and attitudes to the present (cf. p. 226
above). So I should.
Index
abacus, 179 Agilbert, bishop of Wessex, 25 n 89, 55,

Abbo of Fleury, 166, 204, 206, 216, 223-4 58,60,65
Abbotsbury, 141 Aidan, 14, 17, 18, 23, 26, 29-30, 40, 52,
Abelard, Peter, 220 60, 61, 62, 76, 96, 109, 111, 138, 217
Absolution Sunday, 152 Albinus, 102
accounts, 11'6; see also Exchequer; Pipe Roll; Alcluith, 100, 101, 102, 116
tallies Alcuin, 98, 163
Acton, 114 Aldborough, 106
Acton, Lord, 226 Aldfrith, king of Northumbria, 15, 20, 21,
Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, 194, 199 67,94, 136
Adalberon, bishop of Laon, 194, 195 Aldhelm, St, 2, 52, 59, 62, 67, 84
Adam of Bremen, 146, 215 Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, 211
Adamnan of Coldingham, 10 Alfred (Elfridus), king of Wessex, 107, 129,
administration, Anglo-Saxon, 155-70, 171-89; 144, 155,163, 175, 180, 195, 197
see also abacus; accounts; administrative areas -, laws of, 113n, 131, 138
and boundaries; African administration; Alfred the Atheling, 192, 193
Angevin government; assessment systems; Amand, Saint, 57, 58, 64
Burghal Hidage; clerks, royal; coinage; ambassadors, see diplomacy
Continental relationships; County Hidage; Ambrosius Aurelianus, 124
Danelaw; Edward the Confessor; France, Amesbury, 122n
comparisons with;gafol', geld; gwestfa', Andelys, monastery at, 56
hundred; judge; laws; letters close; scir; Angevin government, 167-8
shire; writs Angli, connotation of, 224
AdMurum, 108, 109n., 116 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 114, 115 & n, 163,
administrative areas and boundaries, 168 197,211,213,215
Adomnan, abbot of lona, 35 Anglo-Saxons, origins of, 70, 86n; see also
Adon, 57 Administration, Anglo-Saxon
adoption, significance of, 75 Anna, king of East Anglia, 145, 218
Adventus Saxonum, 123, 124 Annals of St Neot's, 153
Ad Villam Sambuce, see Sambuce Annemundus, archbishop of Lyons, 55
Aelfeah, archbishop of Canterbury, 205, 210 Aquinas, 98
Aelfflaed, 108 arms and armour, 66, 92-6,138, 200;
Aelfgifu, queen of England, 193 see also swords
Aelfric, 149, 158, 163 Arngrim, sons of, 192
Aelfthryth, 197 Arnoul I, count of Flanders, 192
Aethelbald, king of Mercia, 11, 91, 94,134, 136 Arnoul II, count of Flanders, 198
Aethelburh, 56, 114 Arnoul, count of Flanders, 204
Aethelflaed, lady of the Mercians, 144, 216 Arthur, supposed king, emperor, etc,
Aethelfrith, king of Northumbria, 23 121, 124
Aethelgar, archbishop of Canterbury, 203 Asser, 162, 163, 195, 216
Aethelm, 192 Assessment systems, see Burghal Hidage;
Aethelmaer, bishop of Elmham, 152 County Hidage; Dalriada; hides;
Aethelthryth, St, queen of East Anglia, taxation; Tribal Hidage
133,218 Athanasius, 5
Aethelwalh, king of Sussex, 75, 92 Athelstan, 142
Aethelweard, 158, 194-5, 196-7, 215, 216 Athelstan, king, 160, 169, 197
African administration, 175 Attila, 124
229
Augustine, saint, archbishop of Canterbury, 8-10, Benedict of Aniane, 163
40,44,69,71 Benedict Biscop, 2, 55, 62, 64
Augustine, saint, bishop of Hippo, 98 Bensington (Benson), 114, 115
Augustinian canons, 143, 145, 149-50, 151, 219, Beortwulf, king of Mercia, 89
224 Beowulf, 11, 13, 17, 48, 75, 92-3, 94, 96
Austerfield, synod of, 20 -, manuscript of, 216
Autun, 62 Berhtwald, archbishop, 50, 55
Aylesbury, 115 Bertha, wife of Robert the Pious, 192
Axminster, 141 Bertila, 58
Berwick-on-Tweed, 169
'B', biographer of Dunstan, and his biography, Bessin, Saxon settlement in, 123
196,197,204,216 Bethell, Denis, 209n, 227
Baldwin II, count of Flanders, 197 Bideford, 152
Baldwin, abbot of Bury, 143 Birinus, bishop of Wessex, 59
Balthildis, 57, 62 bishops, duties, powers and avarice of,
Bamburgh, 100, 101,102, 104, 107, 108, 111, 39,49-50,148
116,136 Bishop, T.A.M., 177
-, royal vill near, 109n. 'blanching', 175
baptism, 80 Blandinium, 203
baptismal relationships, significance of, 75 Blois, Henry of, see Henry of Blois
Bardney, 144, 216 Blythburgh, 145
Barking, 113 Bobbio, monastery of, 56, 64
-, abbey of, 45 Bocking, deanery of, 153
Barlow, F., 203 bold, meaning of, 113n
Bath, 10 In Boniface, St, 15, 51, 74, 139n
Battle ofMaldon, poem, 216 Boructari, 53
Beauvais, Hugh of, see Hugh of Beauvais Bosham, monastery of, 51
Bede, Anglo-Saxon history, early, knowledge Boulonnais, Anglo-Saxon settlement in, 123
of, 69-70, 123 Bray, 150, 154
—, assessment lists, possible use of by, 129n Brechter, (H.) S., views of, 8-9
-, Britons, views on, 23-24, 38 Breedon, 89
-, church, contemporary, views on, 15-21, Bremen, Adam of, see Adam of Bremen
49-67 passim', see also Letter to Egbert Brevium exempla, 165
-, chronicles by, 31-3 Britons, influence of on conversion of the
-, discretion of, 19 Anglo-Saxons, 72, 76
—, Easter, views on, 36-7 -, Anglo-Saxon relations with, 128n, 132
—, hell, on visions of, 11, 15, 43, 138 Brixworth, church at, 52
-, heresy, on, 22-3, 43-4 Broglie, due de, 226
-, historian, as, 1-48 passim, 49-52, 214 Brogne, Gerard of, see Gerard of Brogne
—, kings and kingship, on, 12, 14, 85-98 Brooke, C.N.L., 210
-, Letter to Egbert, 15, 17, 19, 38, 41, 50 Brough, 106
-, Life ofCuthbert, 25, 31-3, 41, 43, 44, 78 Bugge, abbess, 52, 62
-, Lge of Ceolfirth, use, f 19 Burg, meaning of, 99-108
-, Ligexx of the Abbots, 26, 44-45, 522,111 Burgh Castle, 101 & n
-, miracles, on, 5, 42-7, 112 Burghal Hidage, 155, 158, 172-3, 174
—, models for, see Eusebius; Gregory of Tours; burghs, 159, 161, 172-3, 183
Orosius burial, 143, 145, 147, 148, 216; see also
-, Old English translation of Ecclesiastical cemeteries
History by, 102-3 Bury St Edmunds, 143, 149, 226
-, Romano-British place names, knowledge Byrtnoth, ealdorman, 153
of, 124, 130n
-, theologian, as, 1, 7, 10, 19, 31, 39 Cadwallon, king of the Britons, 37, 103
-, use of by later writers, 212-13, 220 Caedwalla, king of Wessex, 76, 94, 110,
-, words for places used by, 99-119 passim 112,136,213
—, see also conversion; Easter; hagiography caestir, meaning of, 99-108
Index 231
CairMincip, 103n Chelsea, 139
Calcaria (Tadcaster), 99, 117 Cheltenham, 150
Cam, H.M., 159 Chester, 99, 116, 145, 200, 216
Cambrai, diocese of, 61 Chich, monastery of, 224-5, 226
Cambridge, 99, 104, 116 Chilperic, 53
Campodunum, 109n, 113n, 116, 141, Christ Church, Canterbury, see Canterbury,
153 cathedral
Canonical legislation, 163 Christchurch (Twyneham), 151
Canterbury, 99, 100, 101 & n, 102, 103, Chronicle, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
105, 106, 107, 108, HOn, 116, 143 Cirencester, 144, 150
-, cathedral, 148, 210 Civitas, Bede's usage of, 99-108
-, church of, 64, 65, 105, 139, 142, 153, Clare, Osbert of, see Osbert of Clare
154, 205 classical learning, 4, 30, 31, 217, 220;
-, St Augustine's monastery at, see St see also Horace; Ovid; Sallust
Augustine's Clement, 202
-, see also Aethelgar; Augustine, St, of clerks, royal, 149-51
Canterbury; Berhtwald; Dunstan; Clovesho, council at (803), 105
Lanfranc; Laurentius Clovis II, 57
Capitularede Villis, 165 Cluniac order, 194
capitularies, 159 Cnobheresburg, 100, 101 & n, 107, 117
Carlisle, 99, 101, 104, 106, 215 Cnut, king of England, etc., 162, 167, 179,
-, see of, 169 186, 196,201,203,205
Carolongian institutions, relationship to Cnut, St, king of Denmark, 192, 193
English, 129-30, 136, 159-65, 170, coinage, 67, 138, 142, 155-7, 159, 160-1,
173, 182-4, 187-8; see also Gaul, 167, 183, 186-8, 206; see also
relationship with renovatio monetae
cartularies, 158 Cokenach, 122
Catterick, 109n, 111, 116 Colodaesburg, 100, 104, 107; see also
Ceawlin, king of Wessex, 115 Coludi urbs
Cedd, 61,77 Cologne, 103
cemeteries, pagan and early Christian, 79- Coludi urbs, 117; see also Coludaesburg
80; see also burial Columba, St, 70
Centwine, king of Wessex, 213 Columba of Terryglass, St, 71
Cenwalh, king of Wessex, 12, 86, 88, 94, Columbanus, St, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 77
213 Colyton, laws issued at, 162
Ceolfrid, 44-5, 82, 141 comes, 109, 132
—, anonymous life of, 19 -, Carolingian, 182-3
-, letter to Nechtan from, 44 comitatus, 41, 50, 92, 133, 137
Ceolred, king of Mercia (709-16), 12, 19 Conderton (Worcs.), 137
Ceolwulf, king of Wessex, 90 Conrad of Salisbury, 215
Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria, 11, 15 Constance, queen of France, 192
ceorl(s), 131-2, 134-6 Constantino I, emperor, 73
Chad, St, 40, 96, 103, 104, 140 Constantinople, 102
Chadwick, N.K., Mrs, 7 Constantius, see Germanus
chancellor, 177 Continental relationships, 3-4, 70-1, 83,
chancery, royal (or equivalent), 177-8, 180 95, 191-207; see also Carolingian
Channel Islands, 169 institutions; Denmark; France;
Charibert, 53 Flanders; Gaul; Germany; Picardy
Charlemagne, 162 conversion, 69-84 passim
Charles the Bald, 160, 161, 163, 164, 183 Cookham,150
Charles the Good, count of Flanders, Corbie, monastery of, 57, 62
192, 193 Corbridge, 206
charters, 82, 104-6, 184; see also tenure coronation, English, 195
Chelles, monastery of, 56, 57, 58, 59, Corvey, abbey of, 194
62,64 Cotentin, the, 199, 200
Cottonian library, fire in, 215 Durham, county, 171
County Hidage, 157, 158, 174 -, monastery of, 216
Crediton, 151 dux,132
Cropthorne, 112
Cumberland, 171, 200 Eadbald, king of Kent, 55
Cuningham, 113 Eadmer, 148
Cuthbert, monk of Jarrow, 3 ealdorburg, meaning of, 103
Cuthbert, St, 17, 18, 26, 40, 77, ealdorman,89,91, 131-2
109,112,113,137,142; Eanfled, 95
see also under Bede, Eanfrith, king of Bernicia, 94
Life of Cuthbert Eanswith, St, 218
Cuthwulf, king of Wessex, 114, 115 Earconberht, king of Kent, 56, 78, 95
Cyneheard, 141 Earcongota, St, 56, 218
Cynewulf, king of Wessex, 114, 141 Earconwald, 59
Earconweald, bishop of London
Dagan, bishop, 71 Earl's third penny, 160
Dagobert, 55 earthworks, 100, 169
Dalriada, assessment in, 128 East Anglia, East Angles, 89, 124
Daltun, 111, 114,117 -, bishops of, see Aethelmaer; Felix;
Danegeld, see geld Herbert Losinga
Danelaw, administration of, 186 -, Danish rule in, 185
Danes, in Flemish service, 205 -, early institutions of, 125, 126
Daniel, bishop of Wessex, 74 -, kings of, see Anna; Edmund; Eorpwald; Guth
Danish rule in England, 186 rum; Offa; Redwald; Sigbert; Sighere
David, St, 217 -, origins of, 123, 124
decimatores, 127 -, parochial development in, 146, 147,
Denmark, assessment system of, 186 153
-, churches in, 146 -, sees of, see Dommoc; Elmham; Norwich
-, medieval institutions of, possible relations -, see also Aethelthryth, St; Fursey, St
to English, 186 Easter, controversy about, 23-4, 35-7, 44,
Dent, 113 64-5
Derby, 141, 145; see also St Alkmund's; Ebrechar, bishop of Liege, 196
St Mary's ecclesiastical taxation, 50
Derbyshire, 136 Ecgbert, king of Kent, 218
Derwent, royal vill near, 109n, 113n E(c)gfrith, king of Northumbria, 14, 20,
Deux Jumeaux, monastery of, 62 95
Devonshire, 152 Eddius Stephanus, 20-2, 96, 101, 104,
Dialogus de Scaccario, 156, 220 106, 107, 113, 139n; see also
Dicuill, 51 Wilfrid
Diplomacy, 95 Edgar, king of England, 151, 155, 192,
Domesday Book, 126,129,135,136,140, 201,205,217
146, 147, 149, 156-7, 163-7, 172-7, Edmund I, king of England, 193, 197
184,219,220 Edmund Ironside, king of England, 205
Dommoc, 99,117; see also Dummucae civitas Edmund, St, 223, 224, 226
Dorchester (-on-Thames), 99, 117 Edward the Confessor, 149, 154, 205, 209,
Dorset, 113n 227
Dover, see St Martin's -, administration under, 150, 157, 174-6,
dress, changes in, 67, 83-4 178
Drogereit, R., 196 -, clerks of, 149-51
Dudo of St Quentin, 195, 200 -, legislation of, 186n
Dumbarton, 100 -, see also Vita Edwardi
Dummucae civitas, 105; see also Dommoc Edward the Elder, king of England, 144
Dunbar, 104 155,169,195,197
Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury, Edward the Martyr, king of England, 192-3
194, 203, 204, 210, 217; see also 'B' Edwin, king of Northumbria, 8, 24, 37, 55,
Index 233
73, 74, 88,94,107n,113n,136,141, fishing, 138
153 Fitzgilbert, Constance, 211
—, date of conversion of, 74n FitzNigel, Richard, see Richard Fit/
Egbert, Dialogue of, 80-1 Nigel
Egwin, St, 210 Flambard, Ranulf, 151
Ekwall, E., 205 Flanders, administration of, 171, 184-5
Elmet, 90 -, counts of, see Arnoul I; Arnoul II;
Elmham, see of, 105, 151, 152; see also Baldwin II; Charles the Good
North Elmham -, Danes in, 205
Elmham, Thomas, 221 -, English relations with, 191-207
Ely, 86, 113, 142, 165 Fleury, 165
-, see of, 169 Flint, V.I.J., 222
Emma, queen of England, 192, 198; see also Flixton, lOln
Encomium Emmae Reginae Flodoard, 215
Encomium Emmae Regime, 191, 204, 205, Folcard, 204
216 'Florence' of Worcester, 209, 213, 214,
Eorpwald, king of East Anglia, 74 219
Eormenhild, St, 218 Fontenelle, monastery of, 57, 62, 217
Eosterwine, 45 France, administration of, 168-9, 171,184-5
esne, 131 -, comparisons with, 168-9, 184-5;
Essen, 194, 195 see also Carolingian institutions; Gaul,
Essex, 91 relationship with
-, kings of, see Saeberht; Sigbert; Sighere Franks casket, 84
estates, organisation of, 181 freemen, 131
Ethelbert I, king of Kent, 73, 74, 218 Friduricus, 89
Ethelbert II, king of Kent, 53 Frithuwold, sub-king of Surrey, 88, 110
Ethelred II, king of England, 144, 157, 163, Frome, 150
166, 167, 183, 191-207 passim, 219 FulkNera, 192
Ethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, 144, 216 Fulrad, abbot of St Vaast, 203
Ethelred, king of Mercia, 89, 115 Fursey, St, 36,51,59
Ethelwalh, see Aethelwalh
Ethelwold, St, 143, 165, 166, 194 gafol,m
Eusebius, 4-5, 6, 32, 33-4, 35, 42, 46, 51 gafolgelda, 132
Evesham, abbey of, 210 Gaimar, 127
Evrecy, monastery of, 62 Ganshof, F.L., 182
Eynsham, 115 Gamier of Rouen, 202, 206
exactor, 134 Gaul, relationship with, 3, 4, 53-9, 61-
Exchequer, 168, 175-9; see also blanching; 7, 70-1,77,1224, 126-7; see also
Pipe Rolls Carolingian institutions; France,
Exeter, 151, 152 comparisons with; Picardy, relations
—, laws issued at, 162 with
exile, exiles, 55, 72, 94, 95, 137, 202 -, vicus and villa in, 109
Exon Domesday, 174 Gauzelin, abbot of Fleury, 206
gebur, 131
famine, 137 Gelasian sacramentary, ms. of, 64
Faremoutier-en-Brie, monastery at, 56, geld, 157, 159, 160, 167, 172-3, 180-
57,113 1, 184; see also Geld Rolls; hides;
Farnham, 112, 113 Northamptonshire Geld Roll;
Fecamp, monastery at, 202, 203, 205 taxation
fedesl, 131 Geld Rolls, 174; see also Northampton-
Fell, DrC., 193,216 shire Geld Roll
Felix, biographer of Guthlac, 104 geneat, 131
Felix, bishop of East Anglia, 55, 59 Genereus, 70
feud, 92-3,94 gens, definition of, 86-7
Finglesham, brooch from, 79 Geoffrey de Mandeville, 225
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 221, 222, 226 Helgaud of Fleury, 191-2, 193, 206
Geoffrey of Wells, 224,225 Heliand,the, 195
Gerald of Wales, 215 Hemming, 209
Gerard of Brogne, 200 Hengist and Horsa, 125
Gerbert, 191 Hereford, 105, 145
Germanus, abbot of Winchcombe, 198 -, see of, 105
Germanus, St, Life of by Constantius, 6, -, see also St Ethelbert's; St Guthlac's
36,43-4 Henry I, king of England, and reign of,
Germany, English relations with, 70-1, 143,149,152, 167,176-7,178,
194-7 209,211,220
Gertrude, St, 59, 64 Henry II, king of England, and reign of,
gesith, 131,133 158,167
Geuissae, 86 Henry II, king of Germany, 192
Gildas, 38, 217, 220 Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, 212
gilds, 141, 147, 152 Henry of Huntingdon, 200, 209, 212-
Girvii, 86,89, 91,113 13,215,217,219,220,221
Giudiurbs,lOO, 101,117 Heptarchy, concept of, 213
Glaber, Raoul, 192, 193, 198, 200 Herbert Losinga, bishop of Norwich, 151
Glanvill, 220 heregeld, see geld
Glastonbury, abbey of, 49, 214, 216-17, heresy, 21, 22, 26,43; see also
222 Pelagianism
Gloucester, 143, 145, 216', see also Hermann, archdeacon, 224
St Oswald's; St Peter's Herotunum, 114
Goldbury, 222 Hexham, 100, 140
Gorze, monastery at, 165, 166 hides, hidage assessments, 96, 127-9, 157,
Goscelin, 204, 216,219 167, 171, 172-3, 180-1,186; see also
Gratian, 220 Burghal Hidage; County Hidage; geld;
Great Paxton, 144n taxation; Tribal Hidage
Greenwich, 205 Hilda, St, 56, 62
Gregory I, pope, 40, 42, 43, 46, 69, 73, Hildebald, archbishop of Cologne, 64
139,210 Hincmar, 162
-,WhitbyL//e of, 62 history, role of in education, 221
Gregory of Tours, 5, 15,34-5,46,66, 122- hlafaeta, 131
3 Maford,131
Grendel, 75 Hook, W.F., 153
Grim, 222 Horace, 212, 215
Grimbald, 162 horses, 96-7
Grimsby, 222 Hrothgar, 75,93
Guthlac, 94, 132-3, 136 Hruringaham, 113
Guthrum, king of East Anglia, 153 Hugh of Beauvais, 192
Gwestfa, 127 Hugh Capet, 199
Hugh the Great, 197
Hadleigh, 153-4 Humberht, princeps, 89
hagiography, 5, 13-15, 25-6, 32-3, 42, 193, hundred(s), 128, 159, 161, 171, 172-3,
209-28 180,186
-, Welsh, Cornish and Breton, Huns, 123,124
121 Huntingdon, 150
Hanbury, 216 Huntingdon, Henry of, see Henry of
harrying, 169 Huntingdon
Hart, C., on Northamptonshire hidages, Hwicce, 87, 91, 92, 108, 113, 140
157
Havelock the Dane, 222 imperium, definition of, 86
Headington, 144 Inbroninis, 104
Heavenfield, battle of, 14 In Brige, 113; see also Faremoutier
Heimskringla, 160 Incuneningum, 86
Index 235
Ine, king of Wessex, 114 Lantfrith, 202, 204
-, laws of, 50, 75, 80, 89, 128n, 131-2, Laon,62
134-5 Lapidge, M., 196,202
Infeppingum, 86 Lastingham, 113
In Getlingum, 113 Laurentius, archbishop, 71
Inguor, 225 laws, Anglo-Saxon, 67, 75, 76, 80, 89, 113n,
Ingyruum, 113 128n, 131-2, 134-5, 138,159, 162-3,
inquest, sworn, 166 166, 194; see also Leges Edwardi
lona, monastery on, 60, 65, 70 Confessoris
lormenburh, 95 lead, 136
Ireland, Irish churches, English relationships Leeds, 113,153
with and resemblance to, 3, 51 -2, 5 9-61, Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 148
66,71,91,95, 121,127,217 legal system, 178
Isidore of Seville, 99, 103 legislation, promulgation of, in eleventh and
ludeu, 13 twelfth centuries, 178
Leicester, see of, 105, 140
Jarrow, monastery of, see Monkwearmouth Lemarignier, J.-F., 184
and Jarrow Leo, abbot of St Boniface, 199
Jerusalem, 102, 224 letters close, 186; see also writs
Jews, 226, 228 Leutherius, bishop of Wessex, 55
John XV, pope, 199 Liber Pontificalis, 6
John, bishop of Hexham, 17, 40, 96 Liber Vitae of Durham, 24
John, king of England, 168, 227 Liberal vote, 169
John, Worcester chronicler(?), 209 Lichfield, 100, 104, 108
Jonas, 57, 61 -, seeof, 105, 140
Jouarre, monastery of, 57, 58, 59 Liebermann, F., 161-2, 193
judge, judex, 131, 134 Liege, diocese of, 61
Jumieges, monastery at, 57 Limburg, 115
-, William of, see William of Lincoln, 101, 107n, 117, 139, 144, 149,
Jumieges 151,152
Justus, bishop of Rochester, 56, 105 -, Alexander, bishop of, 211
Lincolnshire, 211
Lindisfarne, monastery of, 30, 60, 65, 84,
Kaelcacaestir, 99 100, 137, 142
'Kentish legend', 218,219
Lindsey, 88, 90
Kent, cemeteries in, 79, 91
Liobsynde, 58
-, Continental connections of, 70-1, 126-7 literacy, lln, 31, 158, 174, 184, 191
-, early laws of, 131, 134-5
Littleborough, 106
-, early organisation of, 96, 109, 125-7,
locus, Bede's usage of, 104
140
Loegaire, 121
-, migration from, 137
Loidis, 86; see also Leeds
-, origins of, 124
London, 99, 100, lOOn, 102, 103, 104,
kingship, 13-14, 18, 66-7, 74-8, 85-98,
105,106, 107, 108, 117, I66;see
132-3 also Lundenwic
Kirby, Dr D.P., 8 -, seeof, 105, 139, 146
Knowles, David, 225
Losinga, Herbert, see Herbert Losinga
Lot, F. and Fawtier, R., 184-5
laet, 131, 135 Lothar II, 220
Lagny, monastery at, 59 Louis the Pious, 163
Lambourne, 166 Louis IV, king of West Francia, 19
Lancashire, 168, 171 Louis VII, 185,220
Landevennec, abbey of, 122 Lundenwic, 105, 106
land tenure, 82, 134; see also charters Luxeuil, monastery at, 56, 57, 62
Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 210, Lyminge, 113
227 Lyons, 62, 65
Mainard, 200 Monmouth
Maelmin, 109n, 117 Mont Saint-Michel, 200, 205
Magonsaete, 88 Montreuil, 122
Maidubh, 52 Moriuht, 206
Maldon, battle of, 153 Moses, wand of, 193
Malmesbury, 100, 117 Much Wenlock, monastery, 51,58
—, monastery at, 52 Musset, L., 202
-, Warin, abbot of, 210
-, William of, 107, 143,209,211,213- Nantes, diocese of, 70
23, 226 Natio, definition of, 86-7
Man, Isle of, 169 naval service, 172, 183, 200
Marianus, 215 'Nennius', 13, 24, 103n, 123, 220
markets, 182-3 Newburgh, William of, see William of
marriages, royal, 89, 95 Newburgh
Martin, St, 46,61 Nigel, Norman leader (c. 1002), 199
Matilda, abbess of Essen, 194 Nivelles, monastery at, 59
Matilda, abbess of Quedlinberg, 194 nobility, early Anglo-Saxon, 131-4
Meanuari, 86, 113 Normandy, administration of, 167, 171,
measures, historical study of, 127n 185
Medeshamsted, 89, 108 Northamptonshire Geld Roll, 157, 158,
Medilwong, 109n 174
Mellitus, bishop of London, 77 North Elmham, 151
Melor, St, 122n Northumberland, 171
Mercia, Mercians, 86, 90, 91, 92, 132 Northumbria, early history of Christianity
Meretun, 114 in, 76
Merseburg, Thietmar, bishop of, 215 -, early organisation of, 96, 109, 125-7,
metropolis, Bede's usage of, 103, 108, 139 132
Middle Anglia, 88, 90 -, kings of and in, see Eanfrith; Edwin;
migration, internal, 137 Osred; Oswald; Oswy
Milborne Port, 150 —, noble land tenure in, 134
Mildburg, St, 218 Norwich, 123n, 144, 146, 147, 151, 152,
-, Testament of, 58 225-6
Mildgith, St, 218 —, bishop of, see Herbert Losinga
Mildrith, St, 218 Notitia Dignitatum, 123
military service, 172,180, 183, 200 Nursling, monastery of, 51
mills, milling, 136
minster churches, 140, 143-6, 147, 218- oaths, general, 159, 162-3
19 Odbert, abbot of St Bertin, 203
Minster-in-Thanet, monastery of, 218 Odilo, abbot of Cluny, 194
miracles, 41-3, 46, 201-2; see also hagiography Offa, king of Mercia, 11,92,97, 110, 111,
Momigliano, Arnaldo, 31 114,130,134,179, 195n
monasteries, bogus, 134 -,lawsof, 113n, 138, 145,175
-, 'double', 61,219 Offa, 'king of East Anglia', 224
-, history of (c. 750- c. 950), 218 officials, royal, 133-4
-, size of, 141 Olaf, St, king of Norway, 192
-, see also under names of individual Old Saxons, 90
monasteries ora, 156,189
monastic reform, 165-6 ordeal, 147
—, in Normandy, 201 Orosius, 5,34, 38, 46, 103
Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, 30 Osbert of Clare, 227
-, monastery at, 52-3, 62, 82, 83, 84 Osred, king of Northumbria, 12, 19
-, see also Bede; Ceolfrid; Easterwine Osric, king of Deira, 103
Monmouth, Geoffrey of, see Geoffrey Oswald, king of Northumbria, 13-14,
of Monmouth 37, 54, 55-6, 75, 94, 97, 133, 136,
Monmouth, Thomas of, see Thomas of 137,216
Index 237
Oswald, St, archbishop of York, 203 Polydore Vergil, 221
-, his nephew, Oswald, 204 polyptychs, 164-5
Oswine, king of Deira, 14, 93, 96, 133 poor, the, 137, 142
Oswulf, ealdorman, 142 populus, definition, 86-7
Oswy, king of Northumbria, 13, 75, 76, 94, portus, meaning of, 105-6
95, 96,112,136 portus marts, 205
Osyth, St, 218, 223, 224-5, 227 possessio, 112
Ottar the Black, 205 praefectus, meaning of, 107
Othona, 99 princeps, meaning of, 85-6, 89, 132-4,
Otto I, 197 Priscus, 124
Otto II, 192 Prosper, of Aquitaine, 121
Otto III, 204 provincia, definition of, 86-7
Ouen, St, 5 7 , 6 4 Priim, polyptych of, 164-5
Oundle, 113, 136; see also Undali; Undolum Putta, bishop of Rochester, 18
Ovid, 217
Ovington, 112 Quedlinburg, 194
Oxford, 143, 144, 146n; see also St queens, 95
Frideswide's Quentovic, 106
Oxford Movement, 153
Ramsey, abbey of, 204, 218
paganism, 69-84 passim Ranulf Flambard, see Flambard, Ranulf
Palladius, 121 Reading, 141
Paris, council at (614), 56, 105 Rebais, 62
parish churches, parishes, development of, Reculver, 106
146,153 Redwald, king of East Anglia, 74
-, ownership of, 149, 150, 151 Reginbald, 149, 150,154
-, uses of, 148 regio, definition of, 86-7, 113
parish priests, 148 regnum, definition of, 86
parrochia, meaning of, 112 Regulans Concordia, 163
Partner, N.F., 213n, 227 religious houses, number of,
Patrick, St, 121,217 181
Paulinus, archbishop, 109, 111 re-migration to the Continent, Anglo-
Peace of God, 194 Saxon, 123
Peada, king of Middle Angles, 75, 76, 85, Rendlesham, 109n, 117
91,132 renovatio monetae, 156,161, 167,
Pelagianism, 22-3, 24, 36, 43, 121 186-8
Penda, king of Mercia, 13, 37, 76, 85, 86, Responsa, Hebrew, 179
88,94, 111, 132,218, 225 'Resting places of the English saints',
Penneltun, 114 tract on, 219
Peronne, monastery at, 59 rex, definition of, 85
Perrin, C.-E., 165 Rhun, son of Urien, 24
Perroy, £., 182 Richard I, of Normandy, 192, 200
Peter, abbot of St Peter's, Canterbury, 56 Richard II, of Normandy, 198, 199, 200
Peterborough, 149 Richard Fitz Nigel, 176
Peter Lombard, 220 Richborough, 99, 106,117
Philip Augustus, 184-5 Riemmelth, 24
Picardy, English relations with, 123 Riquier, St, 58
Picts, 14 Robert, archbishop of Rouen, 202
Pilu, 69 Robert, bishop of Lincoln, 152
Pipe Rolls, 171, 175,176-8, 220; see also Robert the Pious, king of France, 188n,
Exchequer 191-2,198
Pitres, Edict of, 161,183, 187 Rochester, 99, 105, 117
place-names, significance of, 72 -, Justus, bishop of, 105
Pleghelmstun, 114 -, see of, 105
Poitou, Roger of, see Roger of Poitou Roger Bigod, 225
Roger of Poitou, 168 Saxon Shore, 123
Rollason, D.W., 218 scir, 131
Rome, 65, 102,203 Scotland, abbot of St Augustine's,
Ronan, 58 Canterbury, 210
Rose, Hugh, 153 Seaxburg, St, 218
royal free chapels, 145 secular clerks, communities of, 143-6, 219
royal saints, 192-3 sedes episcopates, 13940, 151-2
royal vills, 96, 108-16, 135, 140-1, 150, 192- seletun, 114
3 Selsey, 100, 112, 136
Rozala/Susanna, queen of France, 192 -, see of, 105, 140
Rudolph, duke of Burgundy, 198 Sens, archbishop of, 193
Rudolph of Fulda, 51 Sewald, 206
Rugini, Rugii, 123, 124 Shaftesbury, 107
Rumonus, St, 218 -, abbey at, 195
Rutland, 168, 171 Sherborne, see of, 105, 140
sheriff's farm, 175, 176
Saeberht, king of Essex, 72, 77 Sherston, battle of, 205
Saethryth, 56 shires, 159, 168, 171, 220
St Aignan, 191 Shrewsbury, 145
St Alban, cult of, 72 Sidnacaestir, 107; see also Syddensis civitas
St Alban's, 72, 143; see also Verulamium Sigbert, king of East Anglia, 58, 94, 136
St Alkmund's, Derby, 144 Sigbert, king of Essex, 61, 74, 75, 95
St Augustine's, Canterbury, 210, 221 Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, 203
St Benigne, Dijon, 202 Sighere, king of East Anglia or Essex, 225
St Bertin, monastery of, 57, 203 Silchester, 71
St Brice's day, massacre of, 200 slaves, slavery, 138, 206; see also unfree
St Ethelbert's, Hereford, 145 classes
St Frideswide's, Oxford, 143, 144, 219 smiths, 136, 138
St Genevieve, church of, 201 society, grades and organisation of, see
St Guthlac's, Hereford, 145 ceorl; ealdorman; esne', exile; fedesl
St Martin's, Dover, 151 feud; gafolgelda',gebur; geneat; gesith;
St Mary's, Derby, 145 hlafaeta; hlaford; kingship; laet; poor;
St Mary's, Stafford, 145 rheow
St Oswald's, Gloucester, 144 Somerset, 113
St Ouen, monastery of, 201 South Cadbury, 144, 183n
-, alleged corpse of, 201 Southern, Sir Richard, 209,
St Peter's, Ghent, 165, 205 211
St Peter's, Gloucester, 145 Southern Girvii, see Girvii
St Riquier, monastery of, 57 Stade, counts of, 206
St Vaast, abbey of, 203 Stafford, 145-6; see also St Mary's
St Wandrille, 200 Stenton, F.M., 199
saints, inventions of, Stephen, reign of, 152, 209, 211
193 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, 147
Salisbury, Conrad of, see Conrad of Stirling, 100
Salisbury Strasbourg, 104
Sallust, 212 Stubbs, William, 159, 196, 197, 203
salt, 136 subregulus, 86, 132
Samo, 66 succession to kingdoms, 132
Sambusc (ad villamj, 117 Sulpicius, 61
Samson, abbot, his Kalendar, 125 sulungs, 172
Samson, St, of Dol, 121 Surrey, 86, 88
Sancho, king of Navarre, 198 surveys, Carolingian, 163-5
sanctuary, 80, 137, 142 Sussex, conversion of, 82
Sandwich, 106 -, Saxon conquest of, 123
Saxones, connotation of, 224 -, Wilfrid in, 138
Index 239
SuttonHoo, 62, 94,136 also slave; theow
Swegn, king of Denmark, 200 urbs, Bede's usage of, 98-108
Swithun, St, 202 Utrecht, 103
sworn inquest, see inquest, sworn
Syddensis civitas, 105; see also Sidnacaestir Verdun, monastery at, 165, 166
synods, diocesan, 152 Verulamium, 99, 111; see also St Alban's
vicus, Bede's usage of, 108-13
Tadcaster, see Calcaria villa, Bede's usage of, 108-13
tallies, 176 vills, see royal vills
Tarn worth, 136 VitaEdwardi Confessoris, 191, 204, 216
Taunton, 114,166 Vita Sancti Edmundi, 204
Tavistock, 218 Volkmar, abbot of Werden, bishop of
Taylor, Rowland, 153 Liege, 197
taxation, 156, 157, 167, 184; see also Volpiano, William of, see William of
decimatores; ecclesiastical taxation; Volpiano
gafol', geld; hides Vortigern, 121
techniques, early Anglo-Saxon mastery of,
128,138 Waher, 142
Telchildis, 58 Wales, early English relationships with and
Tewdrig, 121, 122 resemblance to, 96-7, 125, 136
Theodfrid, 62 -, Prankish influence in, 66
Theudericus, 122 -, shiring of, 169
Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., 163
2,3, 16,21-2,30,40,41-2, Walter, abbot of Evesham, 210
52,60,65,66,81, Wanborough, 106
139 Wandrille, St, 62
-, Penitential of, 50, 65, 80-1, 133 Warin, abbot of Malmesbury, 210
Theodoric, allegedly a Goth in King Arthur's weapons, see arn.s and armour
service, 121 Wells, Geoffrey of, see Geoffrey of
theow, 131 Wells
Therouanne, diocese of, 61 Wendover, Mathew, 145
Theudebert, 53, 66 Werburg, St, 216, 218
Theuderich II, 56, 60 Werden, monastery of, 196
Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, 205, 206 Wereham, 122
Thomas of Monmouth, 225 Western Hecani, 88
Thomson, R.M., 211, 222, 227, 228 Wessex, early organisation and society of,
Tilbury, 99, 117 131-2, 133
Tiouulflngcaestir, 99, 117 -, laws of, see Alfred; Ine
tithe, 147n, 148, 153 -, subkings in, 88,91, 92, 132
Tomsaetan, 89 Westmorland, 168, 171
Tomtun, 114, 115 Whitby, 'synod' of, 23, 58; see also
Tonberct, 89, 91 Easter
Tournai, diocese of, 61 -, monastery of, 62, 63-4, 108, 112, 141
towns, development of, 142-3 wic, meaning of, 106
treasure(s), 52, 62, 92-3, 94, 133, 165 Wido, abbot of Blandinium, 203
Tribal Hidage, 88n, 89, 90, 91, 128-9, Widukind, 194, 195
130n, 174 Wight, Isle of, 75, 76, 78, 85, 87, 91
tun, meaning of, 113-15 Wihtburg, St, 218
Tunnacaestir, 99, 117 Wiglaf, king of Mercia, 89
Twyneham, see Christchurch Wilfrid, 3, 16-17, 20-2, 39, 40-1, 50, 55,
65,77,82,83,95,110,113,136,
Ubba, 226 138, 139n, 140; see also Eddius
Undali, 86, 113; see also Oundle; Undolum Stephanus
Undolum, 113; see also Oundle; Undali Wilkins, David, 153
unfree classes, 131, 136, 137-8, 148; see William de Vere, 225
William Longsword, 192, 193 Wootton, 114
William of Jumieges, 199 Worcester, 105, 108, 143, 227
William of Malmesbury, see Malmesbury, -, Florence of, see Florence of
William of Worcester
William of Newburgh, 226 -, see of, 105, 140
William of Norwich, St, 152, 225-6 -, see also Wulfstan I; Wulfstan II
William of Volpiano, 202 Worcestershire, 136
William the Conqueror, 149, 154, 178 Worksop, 144n
Wfflibald, 51 writs, 178, 186
Wilmington, 114 Wulfhere, king of Mercia, 75, 88, 91, 92,
Wiltshire, 174 140
Wimborne, monastery of, 51 Wulfred, archbishop, 142
Winchester, 99, 105, 117, 139, 141, 142-3, Wulfstan I, bishop of Worcester, archbishop
147,202 of York, 163
-, New Minster, 144 Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester, 149, 209,
-, Old Minster, 196n 227
-, see of, 105, 166
—, surveys of, 174
Wine, bishop of London, 39, 50, 55 Yeading, 113
Winwaed, battle of, 8, 86 Yeavering, 109n, 111, 117, 136
Winwaloe, St, 122-3 York, 99, lOOn, 103, 104, 108, 117, 139,
Withington, 52 146n
Woden, 79 Yorkshire, 181
Woking, 113 Ythancaestir,99, 117

James Campbell - Essays in Anglo Saxon History

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James Campbell - Essays in Anglo Saxon History

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ESSAYS IN

THE HAMBLEDON PRESS

ISBN 0 907628 32 X (Cased)

©James Campbell 1986

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Campbell, James, 1935-

Silver brooch, found with a large hoard of Frontispiece

1 Frontispiece of the Codex Amiatinus, produced

2 Scenes from the life of Christ in a sixth-century

3 Excavations under York Minster, showing column

4 David and Goliath at the beginning of Psalm 101

5 A fourteenth-century plan of the high altar and

Bede was not only, or even primarily, a historian. He finished the

ideoque donationum acceptationumque eius omnium conscius erat indubius.

Thus much of the Ecclesiastical History is by implication a criticism of

It is a slightly curious but a revealing way of putting it. His sympathies

docet quanta reverentia sit divinis adhibenda sacramentis quamvis per

He clearly did not think it appropriate to enlarge on the deficiencies of

Such works seem neither enlightening nor agreeable to the modern

Additional Bibliographical Note

The establishment and burgeoning of the Church in seventh century

Additional Bibliographical Note

I should have referred to F. Prinz, Fruhes Monchtum in Frankenreich (Munich, 1965), a

It is appropriate that the 1300th anniversary of Bede's birth should be

Bede dedicated his Ecclesiastical History to a king, and it is in a degree a

B. W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols, and index (1885-89).

Additional Bibliographical Note

It is possible that something can be found out about settlements in early

Name Times Times Times Times Times

Name Times Times Times Times Times

The Age of Arthur*

*Review of John Morris, The Age of Arthur (London, 1973).

Additional Bibliographical Note

Early Anglo-Saxon Society

To begin, as is natural, by considering the sedes episcopates of early

hold the whole parish, DB 2, p. 281.

Additional Bibliographical Note

Observations on English Government from

A note on additional bibliography will be found on p. 189 below.

The history of administration on much of the Continent between the

21 F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols, Halle 1903—16, I, p. 47

H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England 500-1087 (1984) is a balanced

England, France, Flanders and Germany

In seeking to do something to put Ethelred's reign in its European

Additional Bibliographical Note

The greatest advances in the study and understanding of Anglo-Saxon

* This chapter was originally delivered as a Denis Bethell Memorial Lecture.

abacus, 179 Agilbert, bishop of Wessex, 25 n 89, 55,

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